


Your Perfect Tempo

by TrickySleeves



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (ie soft erotica), (not a tripfic though), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Character Study, Classical Music, Complete, F/M, Happy Ending, Indie Music, Piano, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Smoking, contentious relationship, moshing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickySleeves/pseuds/TrickySleeves
Summary: Felix is an emotionally stilted and perfectionistic pianist studying performance at University. And Byleth is an emotionally stilted and chaotic pianist studying musicology. They both need to figure out where their ambitions lead--they just didn't realize that they would be doing it together.Between the noisy rock of Mach Coffeehouse and the classical Open Concerts of the music faculty, the two find themselves competing on all fronts. But can they reconcile their different styles enough toduelduet?
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 64
Kudos: 119





	1. Barcarolle: A worthy Opponent

**Author's Note:**

> The amazing [endspire](https://twitter.com/end_spire) has created beautiful fanart for this fic. [Check it out!](https://twitter.com/end_spire/status/1259237137519652864?s=20)
> 
> Featuring:  
> \- The kind of meet cute where the title couple yells at each other  
> \- Byleth trying to understand her place  
> \- A lot of familiar faces dressed up like metalheads, punks, and indie trash  
> \- Felix and Seteth's C support  
> \- Felix waxes poetic every time he hears Byleth play the piano

**1\. a tempest in a tiny room**

Someone was playing the piano in the next room over. The sound was chaotic, rampant—he could hear the sforzandos like thunder, bludgeoning through the soundproofed walls of the practice room. It was the first movement of _Pathetique_ , Felix recognized, and it was glorious. Played strongly and passionately—

as if telling a story of a bloody war—  
a dance of swordsmen that escalated from sparring to dueling, from first blood to death pacts  
—but the war wasn’t taking place on a windy battlefield—  
marbled floors and harlequined costumes marked it in a stuffy ballroom  
—people kneeling, people pleading  
—whispered arguments and stolen kisses.

The whole thing was very distracting.

The practice room beside his was a tempest in a teapot, and the over exuberant Beethoven was making it very difficult to play his meticulous Bach.

His internal counting, usually impeccable, was turning wretchedly on itself. His measures were full of unintentional rubato. And he stumbled over fingerings that he had perfected weeks ago.

Felix’s eyes scrambled to find his place in the score, as his muscle memory stumbled and crawled—a hand disembodied from the mind that commanded it.

The pianist next door was on the second run of the monstrous repeat that defined the piece, and he told himself that he could wait it out. So he waited, resigning himself to tracing the runs on his right hand.

But when it came time for the pianist to move on, to reprise the dramatic introduction and continue through a few more tempests, they took the repeat again.

Bastard.

Despite admiring the arm strength needed to hold down that tremoring bass, Felix was annoyed. And when the other pianist took the repeat for the third time, rather than completing the already godawfully long piece, he was livid.

He stood, swung open the door of his practice room, stomped into the deserted hallway, and raised his fist to knock on the door to the next room.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he would say to this rogue pianist. However, Angry Felix always seemed to find the rightly spited words when the time came. Something would pop out of his mouth, competitive, biting, a little clever, a lot mean (or so he was told). And that would settle it.

He would probably insist that the other musician keep it down. That clearly they didn’t know the meaning of the little “p”s that darted all over the score to mark the piece’s dramatic contrasts. He might even suggest that they invest in a metronome, and take to practicing late at night when no one was around.

If Felix had thought the other pianist was loud before, he could hear them very clearly now. The practice room doors were the weakest point. The sound-proofing was only a bit of foam that covered the door’s interior without filling in the cracks.

But when he went to knock, he realized that the pianist had finally moved on from the rapid repeated section. As they transitioned from the cut-time to common-time section, he heard them inhale a deep breath. It tingled through him, as did the exquisite contrasts of the reprisal. And, rather than knocking, he merely rested his fist against the door. Then, as he listened, he dropped it to his side.

This pianist was doing something with _feelings_. Between the roguish disregard for the exact writing and kind of perfection that came only from the brigand-pianist’s personal interpretation, the sound swiped like a sword across his chest. The counting wasn’t perfect (the way he would have played it), and yet it sounded right.

As he walked back into his own practice room, he strategized a new objective for himself. This time, instead of immediately berating the other pianist, he would sneak out behind them and see who it was.

Knowing and accepting that he would be distracted, he disinterestedly traced scales and adagios across the keys. He was capable of his own kind of passion when it came to music, but it was nothing like the storm he was hearing next door.

When the first movement ended with a bang, the overly emotive fingers picked up the second movement. This was quieter, more clear, like he would have played it himself, with carefully equal triplets. He was almost grateful that the pianist hadn’t taken the opportunity to make this delicate piece overly saccharine.

When, finally, the sonata was finished in soft tones and whispers much quieter than the initial battlesounds that drew him, Felix listened carefully to the sounds from next door.

Although muted, he heard the stool being pulled back. He didn’t hear the door open, but he could tell when it shut.

For a few seconds he continued to trail his notes down the keys, his mind focused on gauging whether the other pianist was right at the door. Counting in his mind with perfect time, he raised his fingers, hastily packed his bag, and made sure to close the door softly behind him.

There she was, the other pianist. Soft green hair waved behind her as she stepped quickly down the hallway. She looked to be fleeing the scene. And to add to the absurd drama of it all, Felix took to chasing her. Not one to call out, Felix had only one way of really getting her to turn around. Foolish and determined, he sped up to overtake her.

When there was no way she hadn’t noticed him, he put his hand out to tap her shoulder. He blundered it, though, and accidentally punched her on the shoulder.

His knuckles grazed lean muscle and she turned around on him. Despite being slightly taller than her, he felt like she was towering over him. His body seemed to be melting downward into his teal skinny jeans in a way that even his aggressively straight posture couldn’t save him from. It could have been the heeled boots she was wearing or her stern, almost vacant expression.

Her eyes squinted at him and her forehead crinkled. She was annoyed, maybe even angry, but when she spoke her voice was even, “Why did you hit me?”

“You play loudly,” Felix said the first stupid thing that came to his mind.

“So what? The room’s soundproofed.” Her tone didn’t change, but her eyes continued to narrow.

“Not that soundproofed,” he countered.

“You chased me down to tell me that?” She was now looking very annoyed, her pale green hair swinging with a jerk of her head, as if she was hoping to get a new vantage on the man who had hit her—a vantage that would make him seem less stupid. “Were you the person in the other practice room? You seemed to be struggling.”

“You were playing so loudly it distracted me.”

“Focus next time.”

Felix shook his head. He didn’t mean to fight, but now he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

“Who are you anyway?” This was, after all, his whole intention for chasing her down. Now, though, he was hissing it out, as if to find the proper name of someone he intended to challenge to a duel.

“Byleth Eisner,” she said, sounding confused.

“I’m Felix Fraldarius.” He gave her time to recognize the name. When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Are you a performance major?” Whatever his intentions about making this other pianist his friend, his tone took on a vehemence of its own, speaking to the thrill of competition.

“No,” she said, looking about to check out of the conversation. “I’m a musicology graduate student, and I was just playing for fun.” Her tone remained infuriatingly neutral.

Felix scoffed. “Don’t let me stop you then.”

“I won’t,” she said lightly as if that was all she needed to hear, and she could get back on her way.

Felix watched her leave, ducking his head in his hand. The gesture made his bun flop dejectedly against his neck.

At some point in that conversation, he was supposed to have mentioned that her music was beautiful, that it made him feel and imagine vivid scenes. That he wanted to hear her play again and soon, and maybe she might even like to listen to him sometime.

But she hadn’t really given him the space to, had she? Byleth—did she make everything into a battle?

Felix shook his head in the middle of the hallway, and said out loud, “What was her problem?”

* * *

**2\. we’ve both been very brave**

The quiet porch of Mach Coffeehouse was one of the few places that Byleth let herself dream past the papers to grade, the practical aspects of her research, the expectations and pressures placed on her by the professors and Dean Seteth.

But there was a gnawing anxiety too. An ache in her jaw that made her wonder, what was she really doing as a graduate student at University? Living like a leaf on the wind with no plans of her own.

Normally, when she felt her jaw ache like this, she started irrationally thinking it was the cigarettes—a grateful vice she adopted from her father. Because without the cigarettes and the shoegazey playlists, there would be so little to talk about on the porch when her students were sick of whining about schoolwork and courses. And the smoke and drones had become part and particle of her very thought process.

No, the jaw ache was something else. Maybe she didn’t know what she wanted, but there was something that drew her footsteps back to to Mach Coffeehouse—unprofessional though it may be. There was something about the moshing inside on the weekends and the cigarette haze outside on the weeknight.

Byleth’s position in grad school was—as idiotic as it sounds—about the money and security. Being a TA was one of the better jobs she found herself contracted to. Plus, there was the security, the stability, and the chance to explore her options without struggling for the time.

Did she believe in the academy? Mostly not. Did she care about the clergy of elitist professors? She blew it like smoke from her mouth. Did she really believe she would find herself in some superfluous research? Not in the least. But she liked the kids, she wanted to help guide them, and there were some professors who did more good than harm.

The whole situation boggled her father. Jeralt was a singer-songwriter who was more often found in the corner of a dive than on a legitimate stage. His guidance oscillated between overprotective and downright neglectful, but it left Byleth growing up with a strong sense of her own freedom.

Without grad school, she didn’t know what else to do. Besides, she would have wandered from job to job regardless. If she had underestimated how difficult it would be to teach students who were only a few years (if that) younger than her, she never mentioned it. She just blew all the frustration out with the smoke and the music

Byleth earned her place as a beloved staff member of the Mach Coffeehouse through the piano skills her father taught her. Those ivory keys were her only hope for expression. She had found that there was so much more she could say with a perfectly spread bang on the keys than she could from her fool mouth.

Her degree was in musicology, her focus on the interchange of music and politics. But she was shafted into teaching history. She couldn’t complain, though—there were clear dates and facts to teach. That, at least, was comforting.

She kept her teacher clothes simple, a pencil skirt that descended halfway down her calves and patterned fishnets. Heels everyday gave her the slightest opportunity to match the height of most students.

But on nights that she spent at Mach Coffeehouse, she could wear the clothes she had favored on the road with her dad. That, too, was comforting. The fishnets stayed, and she put to use old shirts, altered and chopped with cut and rolled sleeves.

Thursday night was Byleth’s shift at Mach, and the porch was a blessedly quiet space. Without a band playing, the only occupants were a few students studying inside. Between their individual conversations and cliques, no one bothered putting music on the overhead speakers.

Though she was on shift for the night, there really was nothing to do. Mach Coffeehouse brought music into town, but that was about all it did. Its coffee was abhorrent, cost 50 cent a cup, and was only obligatorily brewed and obligatorily drunk by the kind of crusty masochists who also tended to shun hippies to the back porch.

In between cigarettes and making headway on her lesson plans, Byleth would drift inside and see what everyone was up to. This amounted to making sure the dishes weren’t piling up and that there were no messes to attend to before wandering back out.

The inside of Mach was unapologetically grungy. The place was full of unsettling trinkets—odds-and-ends of unknown origin. Everything felt like it pre-dated the current cohort of students: a gas mask, homespun pottery, assorted books and textbooks from college courses, flags of various origins, half a mannequin, and a bent-up roadsign. The walls were plastered with art that once advertised the various bands and shows around campus.

Case in point, one of the best artists at Mach was currently working on a poster sketch for next week’s show. Byleth saw Ignatz’s distinctive lettering spell out the band’s name Crimson Flower. Below that Ignatz had sketched an imposing and fierce cartoonization of Mach Coffeehouse’s general manager Edelgard.

He drew her in stylized, pointy armor, holding an axe, and standing on a pile of rubble, looking like something from a D&D campaign. The blunt sharpie drawing didn’t leave a lot of room for expression. But there was something in sketch of Edelgard’s big eyes that suggested they were ready—any time, any day—for arson.

“What do you think, Professor?” Ignatz asked with his much-too-sincere voice.

Professor was a nickname the students at Mach had given Byleth when they learned of her TA Instructor position. It was silly, considering that as a Master’s student she was barely a rung above the undergrads themselves. She couldn’t tell if it showed a sense of naivety for the academic system, or if the joke was on her and they were all in on it.

It didn’t matter, because she couldn’t shake the damn nickname anyway. At least it was better than the nickname she had gotten in her undergrad, the Ashen Demon. That one hadn’t been a fond nickname. She had earned it by removing herself from all the other students. Only showing up for piano performances to pound out perfectly rendered ballads to Mephistopheles, _Ligetti’s Devil’s Staircase_ , and other devilish and difficult works.

Still the Professor name haunted her. It wasn’t like she was the only grad student or even graduated adult who spend time at Mach. There was Yuri, a physics PHD student who started his degree that semester, same as her, and whose text messages were currently blowing up her phone. There was also the cold and laconic Shamir, a chemistry PHD, Catherine, the local kickboxing instructor who sometimes told them off about ruining their lungs, and Alois a pompous law student who wouldn’t stop punning no matter how annoyed you looked.

“Professor?” Ignatz asked again, looking disconcerted at her absent expression.

“Is that Edelgard?” Byleth asked, recovering and seeking to comfort her student. “It looks really good. I think she’d like it. Though I don’t know that I understand it.”

“Well, Crimson Flower is a metal band,” Ignatz said by way of explanation. His voice was wavering a little as if he were suddenly doubting himself.

Byleth tried to follow his train of thought. “And Edelgard is metal,” she said.

“For sure,” Ignatz looked relieved, as if all it took to validate him was that one logical jump. “She’s probably the most metal person I know.”

“It’s perfect then.”

Many of Ignatz’s posters were drawn in a grotesque style with thick sharpie lines. Other students would then copy them onto colored photo paper in the school library. The lettering always looked a little like the title of a B horror movie, the sort that they played every wednesday night—Zombie Zendsdays—at Mach when they set up the projector and popped some microwave popcorn.

Nonetheless, Byleth admired the careful artwork, full of monsters and guitars. One of her favorites was a ripped apart keyboard played by diseased kraken who looked about to keel over. She couldn’t think of a single of these posters where the drawing had anything to do with the band, but it didn’t really matter.

It was all to draw attention. Likely, the rest of the school never knew the band on the poster anyway. They just saw that there was a show that night, and thought maybe it would be a good place to start off the evening.

In the rare opportunity that Mach joined forces and budgets with the college radio station and brought in a band that about sixty percent of the student population would recognize, they publicized that event to high hell, and held them in larger venues around the campus. Byleth usually didn’t show up to those. More people, more space, more publicity, more professors and other academic staff meant less fringe, less heart-to-hearts by moonlight, less moshing, and fewer cigarettes. It wasn’t worth it.

Sitting on a squashed couch were Annette and Mercedes. The girls were sweet, but boy could they gossip. They seemed to make up for it by bringing freshly baked cookies and brownies for everyone to share. The home-baked goods undercut Mach Coffeehouse’s already minimal sales of prepackaged shit. But no one ever cared, and the GM found it a charming.

“Dorothea implied that she had a gig at Pub Abyss,” Annette was saying. “I tried to get that gig a month ago and they told me they were phasing out their evening live music.”

“No one can say no to Dorothea,” Mercedes giggled. “Don’t worry, though Annie. What Dorothea does is way different from your singer-songwriter stuff. She covers music that people know, so it’s a lot more approachable. There will be good places for your art, Annie. Have you talked to Ferdinand about doing a set at Noble Tea?”

Annette sighed. “I’m just worried that after my last gig there, when only three tables stuck around for my whole set, that I’m not going to get another call from Noble Tea.”

“You’re a cute girl who plays the guitar and sings like an angel,” Mercedes said, giggling again. “Ferdinand would be be foolish not to get you back in there. Just give it some time. A small place like that won’t prioritize scheduling live music. They’re probably a bit behind.”

“I hope your right, Mercie,” Annette was saying before taking a big bite out of one of the cookies.

In the far corner, at the only actual table in Mach, Leonie and Hubert sat at opposite ends doing homework. Byleth was surprised to see that Edelgard wasn’t there was well, but she knew the ambitious girl often took evening seminars.

Like Ignatz, Leonie was one Byleth’s own students. She was pretty intense, often telling Byleth about how she was planning on attending grad school herself, and how she intended to surpass Byleth’s education. Byleth knew this was because Leonie had grown up listening to Jeralt’s songs, and she was obsessive about proving herself him. Byleth brushed most of it off, but every time she saw Leonie in Mach, she had to stifle a smug memory of that one time while moshing that she knocked Leonie out cold with a flail of her elbow.

Byleth was careful not to throw punches, as she had to protect her hands. But you never knew what would go flying when the music dropped really heavy. The other pianist at Mach, a quiet but aggressive guy named Felix, didn’t hesitate to throw a punch every now and again—and he was a performance major. Now that she thought of it, that might have been why. What a gloriously reckless outlet it must be, when one smashed knuckle could ruin everything you worked for?

She shifted her focus over to Hubert. Pale, with dark hair and a deep-set gaze that even absurdly high cheekbones couldn’t turn into beauty, the man worked diligently. He only had one shift at Mach, and it was during the event he personally organized, the Zombie Zendsdays. He enjoyed chuckling coldly during slasher flix and had a particular penchant for vampire movies. Nonetheless, Hubert showed up to most shifts, and was the secretary of the organization, taking and sending out emails at every staff meeting. According to the gossip, he was childhood friends with the GM.

At first, Byleth had found him deeply unsettling. She had never seen him eat anything, and he actually preferred the bitter burnt dregs of the coffee at the bottom of the pot. But, since he was another one who preferred sitting on the porch during shows inhaling the noxious air, she had a few opportunities to get to know him better. Conversations with him were never what she considered kind or warm, but they were thoughtful. Despite being rough around the edges, and perhaps a little overwilling to kill her enemies for her, Hubert was always a wealth of information and insights.

She glanced into the reading room where Claude was inverted on a couch. His knees were lazily bent against the couch back, and he held a book above his head. He had a peculiar talent of looking at ease anywhere. As the other person on shift for the night, Byleth wasn’t surprised to find him by himself studying or scheming or whatever it was he did. When she poked her head in, he asked, “All good, Teach?”

“All good,” she replied. “But let’s start closing in thirty minutes.”

“You got it.” Claude flashed Byleth a smile before turning his attention back to his book.

Taking in the quiet crowd, Byleth was unsurprised to find that there really was nothing shift-wise for her to do inside. She grabbed her laptop, screen open to a class powerpoint she was preparing, and went back outside to take her spot on the rocking chair.

Shortly after she settled in, Lysithea, a small girl in Byleth’s class, who was shockingly diligent about her applied mathematics and physics double major, came up to the porch. “Hi professor,” she said passing Byleth. Then, she barely had the door open when she called out, “Are those cookies I smell, yum.”

* * *

**3\. walk around on both legs**

“Fraldarius.” The voice that called him out was unmistakably commanding, despite its musical undertones. Like many of the voices that circulated the music faculty, Dean Seteth had been classically trained in vocals.

Musical or not, though, Felix didn’t lower his guard. In fact, it was the use of his last name that make him stiffen and raised his hackles.

It was the name that paraded around his father’s and late brother’s musical prestige. The name that was driving him, like an arrow loosed from someone else’s bow, along his current path.

It was also obnoxious to be caught like this. Unfortunately, there were no trapdoors down the the practice rooms in the basement. If Felix wanted to go unnoticed through the department, he would have to become much more stealthy walking these halls.

Not turning around, he waited for the man to draw level with him. The sea green hair emerged from his periphery, until it was standing right in front of him.

“Dean Seteth,” Felix hoped that some ounce of respect leaked out around the sharpness of his tongue.

“I saw that you have not signed up for our Tuesday Open Concert next week. Do you have another conflict?” Seteth raised his hand to the thin strip of beard on the edge of his jaw. A nervous gesture, but purposeful and calculated to inspire trust.

“I have a shift that evening. At Mach Coffeehouse—my work study.”

“I thought as much. But I also think, Felix,” his voice was now taking on a fatherly tone that failed to make this conversation any more endearing, “that you schedule your shifts to get out of these performances.”

“Why would I do that?”

“That’s a good question. You are an excellent performer—one of our best.” Felix glared, forcing himself not to say under his breath that he was _the best_. “Nerves have never been your issue either,” Seteth continued, immune to Felix’s glares and counting off the likely excuses on his long cellist’s fingers. “So why is it that you avoid these performances? Certainly one such as yourself would relish the opportunity to show off your skills.”

Show off his skills, like his father did, touring his violin all over the country. Like his brother had done when he was still strong enough to bow and pluck his cello.

“Performances like those are mere pageantry. I can demonstrate my skills in other ways. I assure you, I am getting better all the time, whether or not I perform at these open concerts.”

“And yet, it’s not bettering your skills that I’m worried about. There are other reasons to attend the Tuesday Open Concerts.”

“Like what?”

“To begin with, the other music faculty and I expect you to. But even more importantly, these concerts give our music program a sense of community. Musicians need communities and networks, whether you like it or not, Felix. They need chamber groups to play with, clients to hire them, dueting partners to challenge them, and friends to inspire and support them.”

Felix made a scoffing noise, but Seteth was unflapped.

“Furthermore,” he continued. “If I don’t see you sign up, I will be forced to pull seniority on your work study and switch your shift myself.”

Felix knew to yield when he was defeated. “Fine, Dean Seteth, I’ll sign up.”

“Good,” Seteth’s musical voice sounded relieved. “Choose a strong piece. I look forward to hearing you play.”

* * *

**4\. fight for the scary day**

Felix attended the staff meeting for Mach coffeehouse that Friday. Despite working there since he started at the university two years ago, his attendance to the meetings was infrequent.

He sat next to a caffeine-eyed Sylvain. Everything about Sylvain, from his posture to the direction of his seat, was facing where Edelgard sat as she ran the meeting. He glued his eyes to her as if she she were the only person in the world, barely breaking away to wink at Felix who was shifting irritably.

“Out of all your misguided causes,” Felix hissed at Sylvain, “that might be your most idiotic.”

“What do you mean?” Sylvain asked, pretending innocence with his puppy dog eyes.

“You don’t have a chance in Hell with Edelgard.” He said it flippantly, but the words felt appropriate. Edelgard wasn’t one to flirt or beat around the bush. The girl was sharp, commanding. And what warm parts she showed her friends were often buried under the weight of her expectations for them. He knew she felt a lot of pressure from her family and her station, but didn’t they all?

“Relax Felix,” Sylvain whispered smoothly. “I don’t have a thing for Edelgard. I just want to see how riled up Dorothea will get if I keep looking at her like this.”

Felix humphed and turned his attention to the meeting.

“So that settles it,” Edelgard was saying. “We aren’t having a concert on Saturday, so instead we’ll host an open mic. Ignatz, I trust you to collaborate with Bernadetta, and get some posters underway ASAP. Then, enlist Leonie and Petra to help you circulate them, they’re usually efficient at that.”

Felix looked at where the purple-haired Bernadetta was sitting next to Edelgard on the couch, already sketching something in a notebook. Although she came to every staff meeting, driven by some inexplicable loyalty to Edelgard, Felix was suprised each time to find the recluse out of her room.

As if she could feel his eyes on her where she was huddled over her sketchbook, she looked up at him. He gave her the barest hint of a smile across the room. She wasn’t so bad. A writer, poet, and artist. Sometimes when well-meaning friends backed her into a corner at social occasions, she would come out saying the most bizarre things—a mouth full of surprises.

“Okay then,” came Ignatz’s voice from another corner, tucked somewhere that Felix couldn’t see him. Ignatz, Felix had learned a few days ago, was one of the TA Byleth’s students. A history and art double major of Felix’s year, he gave glowing reviews of Byleth’s lectures. Apparently, they were inspiring to his art. Felix wondered how good Byleth’s lessons could be. Or was Ignatz just a suck up?

“That wraps up the majority of our agenda,” Edelgard was saying. “Are there any other issues or concerns that we need to bring to the group.”

There was a rustle of people packing up their things, and Felix could even hear Annette picking up the threads of a previous conversation somewhere behind him.

“I have one,” he said.

“Ah, Felix,” the room quieted down again. “I thought you must, considering you don’t often attend staff meeting.” On the other side of her, Felix could see Hubert typing furiously at his secretary notes. That struck him as odd, considering Felix hadn’t even registered a concern yet.

“I need to switch my weekly shift for the long-term,” he said, not bothering to offer his reasons.

“When is your shift again?” Edelgard asked, peering over Hubert’s shoulder to look at the shift calendar.

“Tuesday early and late,” he said, hoping that no one would draw a connection between that evening slot and the open concerts.

“Right,” Edelgard said peering at the schedule. “Well it looks like we actually have three people including yourself on Tuesday early. So assuming everyone shows up as they should—” she didn’t even smile around the threat in her voice. Felix could almost feel Hubert internally simpering next to her. “—We won’t need to fill that spot. Tuesday late, though, is just you and Sylvain.”

Felix didn’t bother glancing at Sylvain in apology. Sylvain could get on much better with his flirting without Felix there glowering at him anyway. And if he felt abandoned, that just meant he would have to show more interest whenever Felix invited him to study.

“Well,” Edelgard was saying, “I’d rather settle this here if we can. Is there anyone willing to pick up or switch to a Tuesday shift?”

As the other staff members looked around the room at each other, Felix became aware of how few favors he had done for any of them lately. He been more or less permanently grumpy to everyone since he and Annette had broken up last year. It was water under the bridge to the two of them, but everyone else seemed uncomfortable with Felix brash glares. Even Mercedes was looking at her hands, unable to throw him a bone. Felix felt a slight sting, realizing he at least expected to hear Annette’s familiar, “I’m your girl.”

When even Edelgard was beginning to look uncomfortable, she said “We’ll send out an email then. Hubert, can you—”

But Felix cut her off. “Wait a minute. Is this about the damn open concerts?” He knew the fury in his voice was an overreaction, but he didn’t like being forced to show his hand.

“Well we all go to them, Felix,” Mercedes said evenly. “Even if we don’t all play.”

“And some of us perform at them,” Dorothea added. Felix noticed she sounded grumpier than usual and seemed to be addressing this remark to Sylvain rather than himself.

“Well I have to perform at them now. Dean Seteth is making me.”

“Oh Felix, that’s great. I can’t wait to hear you perform,” Mercedes said so sweetly that Felix couldn’t find it in him to glare at her.

“Well if that’s the problem,” Claude said, sounding nonchalant as if he just now realized there was a conversation going on. “I can switch with you. Switching though, not picking up more shifts,” he clarified swiftly to Edelgard, “I don’t want too much work.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want to overtax you, Claude.” Edelgard looked at Claude as if sizing him up. It was the only way she ever looked at him. “When is your shift then? Thursday?”

“Yep, Thursday early and late with Teach.”

“And that works for you, Felix?”

Felix nodded. He was still annoyed about having to admit that he was performing—despite it being, after all, the whole focus of his major.

“Okay then. Claude, you’re on for Tuesday late with Sylvain. Felix, you have Thursday early and late with the Professor. She’s not here now, but Hubert will send an email to let her know.”

Felix’s eyes grew wide as he realized for the first time who Claude meant when he said Teach—that other pianist, the TA Byleth.

“Good, is there anything else? Nothing. Well let’s start setting up for the show tonight.”

* * *

**5\. we both pull the tricks out of our sleeves**

There was nothing gratifying about seeing that the small theater so full of people waiting to listen to the open concert. It was even worse when Felix realized that so many of them were people he recognized.

There was a whole demographic of Mach Coffeehouse staff who didn’t give a shit about music, only hitting up the shows because they liked the scene and the parties. Then there was the other demographic. The supportive ones who played music of all kinds and went to see their friends play music. The supportive ones were the worst.

Walking in, Felix felt himself scoff and frown though no one was even talking to him yet.

Seteth had put his name last in the concert order. The cruelty of it suited the dean. It meant Felix would have to stay there through the whole performance, watching his peers struggle through their various skills.

Always surveying in vain for a worthy opponent. The copier-printed and crudely scissor-cut program was crumpling in his hand. Was he really so tense? Did it really matter so much?

The thing was, as if pouring salt into the wound, Seteth positioned him on the line-up after that grad student Byleth. So he got the finale position, the best spot. But, wouldn’t it be sensible to distribute the other pianist of the night among the singers and violinists who had signed up?

“Why am I even here?” he said under his breath as he took a seat next to Dorothea, who was busy pulling her long hair down from a ponytail and relaxing it against her shoulders. Who was she preening for tonight?

He allowed himself to scowl at the back of Seteth’s head. And then he turned his scowl on the history TA Byleth who was sitting next to Seteth, her elbow resting on the armrest of the empty seat next to her and her jaw resting on her fist.

Dorothea snatched the list out of his hand. “Yuri’s not on the list,” she said looking at where Felix was glaring. “But I thought he might be here anyway.”

“What? Who’s Yuri?” Felix asked shaking his head as if trying to dislodge his own annoyance.

“Oh, he’s a graduate student. He usually sits in that empty seat next to the Professor.” She meant Byleth when she said this, and Felix heard his quarelous mind wanting to correct her that Byleth wasn’t actually a professor. So Dorothea had seen the direction he’d been scowling and thought he was looking at the empty chair next to the TA Byleth. “He’s an amazing singer, himself, but he rarely performs in public.” She sighed, “With his looks, he could really be something.”

“Is that all you care about? Looks?”

“Hardly, but you have to admit that it helps. The professor’s very pretty too. They’d make such a handsome, talented couple. If they just managed to nail each other down to it and stopped dancing around it. Not exactly a power couple, but something gorgeous, like a work of art…”

“They’re together?” Felix asked, not knowing why he cared one way or the other.

Dorothea looked at him in suprise, and he looked hard at the paper to avoid meeting her eyes. He didn’t usually respond to when she prattled gossip at him. “Not exactly. They’re fucking, they’re sometimes affectionate in public. Ask either of them, though, and they’ll say it’s casual, nothing serious.” Trust Dorothea to have pried about it. Felix made a humphing sound.

“Seteth put me right before Lindhart’s violin performance.” Dorothea continued, “He’s not much of a violinist but he is cute in his own way, isn’t he?”

“Don’t expect him to stay awake while you sing.” Felix could feel how ruffled his words had made Dorothea, though, and decided to soften his tone. “You always need an audience, don’t you? Couldn’t get Sylvain to come see you sing?”

“You know very well that Sylvain has shift tonight,” she said fiercely. Then her eyes looked downcast for a second. “I don’t think it’s intentional, but he really does show very little interest in coming to any of my performances.”

“It’s not personal. He doesn’t have much interest in music in general.”

“True enough,” she said, trying to pretend that she had left her sad expression behind. “Well, no matter! I’ll just have to sing to you then.”

Felix raised his eyebrows but he wasn’t frowning.

Despite his earlier annoyance, the performances flashed by rather quickly. It took a lot, he recognized, for the average student to perform for any more than three minutes, and even the performance majors—mostly people he didn’t talk to very often, two violinists, a cellist, a harpist, another pianist with jarringly modern tastes and styles, and Dorothea with her singing—stuck to shorter polished pieces.

He even smiled when Annette sang one of her whimsical little ditties, watching Mercedes clap from the front row.

Halfway through the concert, a lavender-haired man who must have been Yuri sped quickly up the aisle-way and scooted gracefully into the seat next to the TA Byleth. Felix was impressed by his movement alone. It was stealthy and quick. If Felix hadn’t been scowling around everywhere, he would definitely have missed it.

He watched the TA Byleth’s head turn slightly toward the man. Was that a little smile that altered the shape of her jaw. After all, this Yuri had managed to make it before she performed. That should be enough for anybody, right?

When Dorothea sang, he watched her avidly, and could feel her meeting his eyes. The girl really did need an audience, but otherwise she had everything it took.

Finally, it was Byleth’s turn to play. Felix wondered if she would be playing her Beethoven Sonata. Instead, she came out with something else. He recognized the pieces as Mendelssohn’s _Venetian Boat Songs_. Under Byleth’s hands, they had a similar tone to _Pathetique_ —

light and moody at the same time, and—  
lovely, but simple. They brought to mind the rocking of a boat on soft waters—  
he thought of fabric sails the minty green color of Byleth’s hair  
—a hand across his brow brushing soft bangs back from his face—  
and the soft sounds of bells overhead  
—as Byleth stepped lightly off the damper pedal to render the bells into the flow of the haunting dissonance.

The pieces were too easy for her really. But she wasn’t a performance student and had no need to show off. She was just playing this for fun, because it was pretty and because she liked it. And Felix knew this levity was a mask. Underneath it was the Byleth that was playing like there was a fury burning inside her.

Could this duality be the worthy opponent? The cool panache with which she struck the little bells of the gondola, the waves that her hands rang out with so much off-tempo control?

He would have listened to her for another hour, for a whole day and night, for each night of the year with her as his musical Sherherazade playing permutation upon permutation of each new song every night to keep her very life.

But the pieces were short, and her turn had ended, and he had forgotten to clap, because his turn had come up.

The two fugues he had chosen for this concert were no joke. And he handled them as if there weren’t fifty or so people staring right at him— Wondering if he really was as good as they say. Wondering if he deserved to be the son of Rodrigue Fraldarius the celebrated violinist. Wondering what it meant to be the younger brother of Glenn Fraldarius, whose ‘poetic’ death had ravaged the hearts of the world classical music community.

Felix hated that his main motivation during public performances was to measure up to this pedigree. He had promised himself during his freshman year that he would find a way to cut his own path. And yet, every concert seemed to be this same pageant of the Fraldarius name.

When he finished and the concert ended, Felix put a massive scowl on his face to push away anyone foolhardy enough to tell him how well he played.

Of course Seteth always was unflapped by his scowls. He came walking over with the other pianist Byleth and her purple-haired dandy.

Felix watched as Byleth said goodbye to Seteth, smiling almost tenderly at the man as if they were friends. Then her eyes caught Felix’s. Perhaps it was obvious that he was watching her—them—the group of them? She gave him a sharp, unsmiling wave, and then walked out with Yuri—with whom she was supposedly not in a couple.

“Well-done,” Seteth said, looking genuinely pleased. “You’ve gotten better even since your performances last year.”

“I am always getting better,” Felix said, stifling into his own mind the part of him that wanted to say how it was never enough.

“It’s good for your peers to see what you can do. And I hope you’re paying attention to the skills of the other students as well.”

Felix nodded sharply. That feeling of performing was getting to him, and he couldn’t help the part of his mind that kept comparing him to his father and brother. It was time to get out of there, time to do something else.

“Well, I won’t keep you.” Seteth said as if reading signs that Felix didn’t know he was showing. “The next open concert is in two weeks. You’re not off the hook yet. I expect you to sign up.”

Felix walked out of the theater gratefully alone. His path automatically turning its way back to Mach Coffeehouse, where Sylvain would be closing soon with Claude.


	2. Scherzo: Barely Maintaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- Some metal moshing and Byleth's hair obsession  
> \- The title couple yelling at each other during a party  
> \- A one-sided rivalry and a very disappointing date  
> \- Byleth breaking down a bit (and listening to 69 Love Songs on repeat)  
> \- Brave Felix stepping up  
> \- Did he say duet or duel?

**6\. we fall apart in the parties of the empty heart**

From the breathlessness of those escaping to the porch during the show, Byleth could only guess that the band had managed to get the crowd dancing and bumping.

The one time she had stepped inside, elbows were flying—that was Caspar and Petra. Heads were banging, she noted the wild hair of Dimitri and Mercedes. Edelgard and Hubert were standing on the outskirts nodding aggressively and rapturously.

Dorothea had been hopping and bouncing off one person to another, and Byleth had even seen Felix throw a punch or two at Sylvain who dodged away, looking fondly irked.

The punches were incredibly stupid of him. Not because Sylvain was larger, Byleth had the impression that Felix was scrappy in a fight and wouldn’t go down easily. More because, if he damaged his hands, there would go his major, there would go his career. Byleth shrugged. Felix wasn’t her student, no matter how often she found him spying on her in the practice rooms, and it really shouldn’t matter to her what he did.

These thoughts of Felix, his soft hair coming down from what was once a tight bun, while he slugged and spun with the bass beats, were what quickly chased her back out onto the porch.

Outside, some of her own students crowded onto folding chairs and leaked out onto the lawn. She saw Hilda dressed up in a black and pink corset chatting with Leonie. Claude lazily shuffled a deck of cards, looking expectantly at Ferdinand, whose cheeks were pink enough to tell Byleth he had pregamed the show. Well, that and the easy way he let Claude bet him out of his pathetically small tips from Noble Tea.

By the time the show was freshly finished, half of the occupants had already started down the street to the afterparty. Byleth stayed behind, however.

She helped the closers pack up audio equipment and microphones, as the band dropped sweat into their instrument cases, untangled their pedals, and loaded their amps. She picked cigarette butts off the porch into a trash bag, earning her Edelgard’s begrudging gratitude.

Now that their death metal was packed into cases, and they had stopped screaming about damnation, demons, and death knights, the band members were all very cordial. Byleth recognized the bassist with his long blond hair as Mercedes’ brother who sometimes helped with the 4am baking shift at Noble Tea.

For the show, the drummer Balthus had fashioned his own black hair into a mohawk that rivaled Caspar’s. Byleth bummed him a cigarette, the biggest tip she had on her at the moment, spent a moment admiring the mohawk. He wasn’t her type, but she couldn’t help briefly fantasizing about what all that black hair would look like loose and around his shoulders. Would it be soft without all that product?

When Mach Coffeehouse was cleaned and mopped, the drawer counted, the dishes washed, the closers and musicians were ready to bounce to the after party. Byleth walked through the dewy night, the Mach group prancing down the center of the street and psyching themselves into party mode. Hubert and Edelgard walked on one side of her, making cryptic comments. Balthus walked on the other side, offering tongue-in-cheek opinions about recent metal releases and swigging Irish whiskey from a flask with a black skull on it.

Down the road from Mach Coffeehouse, the shabby partyhouse was already rocking with music when Byleth arrived. A variety of graduate students rented the house, including Yuri, and his friends Constance, Hapi, and Balthus. Like Byleth, the other young graduate students were fond train-wrecks, drinking in between seminars, throwing parties every weekend, and Hapi’s idea of preparing lunch was taking a fat stalk of _raw_ broccoli along with her to class.

This made them the ideal delegates for hosting the majority of Mach’s parties. Somehow, no matter how loud the party got, Constance always managed to get them out of noise violations, and Balthus was liberal with the beers.

The house had a large dining table. At any other party it would be arranged with red cups for beer pong. But no, around this table were a gaggle of people quietly crushing up pills and taking snorts, using rolled up index cards, retired from some pre-med’s organic chemistry exam. Addy, must be, speed.

At the nucleus of this gaggle, Byleth saw the lavender hair that she was expecting. As if sensing her presence, Yuri turned around from the table, unconsciously punching the underside of this nose with the back of his hand, self-conscious of lingering powder.

“By,” he said, his smile devious, his pupils wild, already starting to dart and move. “Glad you made it.” Byleth raised her eyebrows and walked up the the table where Yuri put his arm around her shoulders, his fingers softly twitching against the skin of her arm.

She looked at him sideways. His eye makeup was bright for the evening, his eyelashes a length that ate her up with jealousy when she first met him. When no one was looking, she ran a few fingers through his hair, and he smiled at her indulgently.

“Want some?” he said looking down at a half-line of powder and an unfurling index card on the table.

“Nah,” Byleth said. She was never really sure where the pills came from, whose prescription it was, who bought, who sold. If she decided to take some, no one would question her about it or ask her cough up for it. A perk of being a pretty girl at a house party—she was welcomed to get blitzed out of her mind at someone else’s expense. The predatory nature of that wasn’t something she dwelled on too often. She wondered briefly if Yuri, as one of the beautiful people, got some of the same perks she did, or did he hand over some cash for his jitters?

“I’m going to go make a drink,” she said, wiping her lips across his cheek as she left his embrace.

“Yuri-bird,” prompted Hapi who was looking down at the half-line. The girl was already jittery and ready to escape into the dark basement, with its amps and its corners and the usual dancing glowing dancing.

It didn’t take long for couches to fill with jackets, scarves, and a few wallflowers waiting for their liquid courage to kick in. Byleth noticed a hopping excited Hilda trying to drag another of her students Marianne off the couch, where Marianne seemed to have shrunk herself into other people’s coats. Byleth found herself sympathizing with Marianne right then, which could only mean she needed a drink.

Grabbing a plastic university recruitment cup from a cupboard, Byleth poured water from the tap on top of her pale liquor. Soda water would have been preferable, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Most of the kids here had a terrible sweet-tooth—cream-soda lips all the time. She learned early on not to trust the jungle juice. It wasn’t the threat of unknown liquors that discouraged her, so much of the 1 lb bag of powdered sugar that Annette and Lysethia always slipped in.

“Not drinking the punch?” Felix asked turning around to her and narrowing his eyes at the lackluster cocktail she had just made. She hadn’t noticed him and Sylvain standing against the opposite counter.

“It’s not laced with anything,” Sylvain said, turning on her suavely, his big brown eyes already looking bright and hopped up.

“It’s foul that you even have to say that,” Felix said frowning at Sylvain.

“I agree,” Byleth said. These two were difficult to calculate, the rumors of their personal traumas ran deep. And they were both about as volatile as a wolf with a raging toothache.

“Well, you’re looking lovely tonight, Professor. I didn’t see you much at the show.” Sylvain always shook off Felix’s disparaging insults like he was made of cellophane, and now he was openly checking her out.

“I was mostly outside,” she responded.

“Wise choice,” he said, bringing his eyes back to eye-level. Byleth was no prude, as evidenced by her fishnets, cut-out shirt, and short skirt, but the way that Sylvain went about his Don Juan lifestyle put her off a little bit. He flirted like it was his obligation, and he womanized like a sacrificial lamb.

“It was getting kind of rowdy in there,” Sylvain continued. Silently, Byleth registered her hope that they could be friends someday. “I blame Raphael and Caspar. If not for those two, more people would come to our shows.” Sylvain gazed at her flirtatiously over the rim of his cup as he sipped his drink.

Byleth looked away from that trap, instead catching her attention on Felix’s hands. Wrapped around a glass of rye, his knuckles were red and scraped. It wasn’t just Raphael and Caspar, she thought to herself.

“Not that it matters, anyway.” Sylvain went on, better than either of the other two at making conversation. “A few people would just be a few more dollars, and Mach really does exist off of good intentions alone.”

“And a puzzling endowment from the college for being a ‘cultural institution’,” Byleth quipped. “But I agree with you, if Rapheal even spent a quarter as much time on his studies as he does at the gym, I wouldn’t have to worry about him bringing down the class average.”

“You shouldn’t worry too much, Professor,” Sylvain turned the nickname into a flirtatious purr. “You have some really smarties in your class. Claude’s something of secret genius, and that Lysethia,” Sylvain whistled to illustrate his point. “Speaking of which, there are some pretty girls at this party who need greeting,” he said walking off to the entrance where Mercedes and Annette had just come back inside.

Byleth and Felix looked at each other awkwardly. They should be used to this already. After all, it was the same awkward vibe that filled most of the time that they were on shift together. Felix was always sizing her up, commenting disparagingly on what she did. And for her part, she tended to quip right back at him.

This time, she tried to focus her mind on being a calm presence. While she considered her posture, the set of her hips, the tilt of her chin, she let her eyes drift to Felix’s hands and his red raw knuckles.

“Why are you staring at my hands?” Felix asked sounding angry.

The growl broke Byleth’s practiced coolness. Her natural posture came back, as did the slightly concerned, mostly disapproving look on her face. “That’s really stupid for you to do, you know.”

“What is?” he snarled.

“Throwing punches, putting your hands in jeopardy. Don’t your instructors tell you off for it?”

“I know my own limits.” His eyes traced her own before flickering away, and his fingers were turning white from gripping the glass so tightly.

“How are you not worried about your hands?”

“What’s it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.” Byleth found herself speaking loudly now, her focus flicking from the amber of the glass of rye in Felix’s hand to the amber of his eyes. “But it should matter to you! You’re skilled, and you hunger to get better. Isn’t it a little self-defeating to—”

Just then Byleth felt the weight of an arm slinging casually around her shoulder. Hot in the face, she realized that the kitchen had filled up around them. Some people were watching her arguing with Felix, including the group that had come in from the front door with Annette, Mercedes, and Sylvain.

“Not to interrupt anything,” Yuri said, a little too smoothly and very close to Byleth’s ear. “But I was thinking of heading outside.”

As she let him lead her away, Byleth looked back over her shoulder, past Yuri’s hand, to see Felix turn on his heel and walk into another room. Outside, the music was only a dull bump. Byleth was grateful to find the soft chatter of the smokers much more chill than the heady indoor emotions.

She could sink into Yuri’s pretty voice and pretty eyes. She could ignore the fact that, aside from them both being attractive graduate students and music lovers who met on the first day of orientation, she had nothing in common with him. She found him intoxicating, the sort of person who brandished his experiences. She sunk into his stories.

In the backyard, they talked and they kissed. Magnetized by the seduction of the outdoor air and drinks, they traded smoke between their mouths with more kisses. Byleth felt alright about it. She liked the smoothness of the relationship, she liked how self-possessed he was, and she liked running her hands through Yuri’s pretty hair.

And then, the spell broke. Yuri popped back inside to do another line, as if he hadn’t had enough already—as if she weren’t enough. He invited her to come along, of course, but she said no. The disappointment she felt when she slunk down on the porch had little to do with missing him. It was more that, once he left, she wasn’t really sure what she was doing there.

“Hey Teach,” Claude said. He sat down about a foot from her on the porch. Byleth again marveled at the man’s exquisite ability to look comfortable no matter where he was or how he sat. Byleth, on the other hand, always looked like terribly stiff wherever she was, the unfortunate consequence of spending too many hours sitting on a piano bench.

“Claude, Hi,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’ve already done my reading for your class. So you don’t have to be my Teach tonight.”

“It’s Friday, Claude. I’m more concerned that you have your homework done already.”

Claude shrugged. “It’s interesting stuff. If you want to make any impact on the present you have to know the past, right?”

Claude rarely attended the Mach shows. Byleth could only surmise that music wasn’t his particular poison. But she was always glad to see him at the parties. He was comfortingly refreshing and clear-eyed.

“Is something eating at you, Teach?” He asked. Byleth couldn’t tell if he was truly as earnest as he sounded of it this was a measured way of prying information out of someone.

“I suppose,” she began, not really knowing what words would come, “I’m not sure why I’m here or what I’m trying to achieve.”

Claude shot up from his slouch, clearly not expecting to hear anything so sincere from her. “Whoa, that’s intense. You must really be feeling it, you usually stick to the cold, flat niceties.”

Byleth wondered if maybe the gin was finally penetrating the brick wall surrounding her tongue and its ability to self-express.

“All of you,” she gestured widely at the students around the party, “are all so ambitious. You have these intense passions and plans that you’re working toward. And I’ve just been floating along. The thing is, I’ve never cared before. It’s being around this crowd that me wonder what I’m doing.”

“That’s heavy, Teach.” Claude let a little silence pass between them. It was easy, not like the awkward silences between herself and Felix which were so loaded, but with what?—half-spoken mockery? unspoken curiosity?

When Claude did begin speaking again, Byleth could tell that some of the cold calculation had dropped from his eyes. “I’ve always had a lot of ambitions. Some of them, I know where they came from. But others?” he shrugged. “And all my work, though, goes into figuring out how to make them happen, that’s the passion you’re talking about I guess. But I wouldn’t know the first thing about finding new ambitions. I think, though, that you probably have them, even if you haven’t uncovered what they are yet.”

Byleth nodded, more grateful than she could express for Claude’s honesty. “Where does one start knowing what they want?”

“Take the positive approach and start by identifying things you like about your life and what you want to do more of. Or take the negative approach and cut out the things you don’t want.”

“I suppose that I don’t want to be so disconnected anymore,” she ticked off the negative approach on her fingers, as if this was a one-and-done task. “And I think I want to find a way to give back,” she said ticking of the positive approach, her hand now holding out two fingers to the air.

“That’s almost sweet, Teach,” Claude said with his dazzling smile.

“I still have no idea what that means, though.”

“Keep opening up like this and you’re bound to find it sooner or later.”

That night Byleth left the party alone, thank goddess. She had cast one look at Yuri in the basement with the dancers, and judged that affair a mess she didn’t want to deal with. Maybe it was cold that she left it like that, but her casual relationships always managed to bounce back from those minor slights and abuses, until they didn’t. Besides, walking alone felt good, almost free.

* * *

**7\. unless I put it in a song**

Stepping down into the basement after an achingly dull music theory lecture, Felix heard a familiar voice through the door of one of the practice rooms. Annette’s singing seemed to wash over him like a spring day sitting out on the quad after a successful concert. It was a guilty pleasure.

Felix took down the second ear of his headphones to better hear her. She was working hard at fitting a new set of lyrics into her sometimes unconventional rhythms. The lyrics were Annette’s typical whimsy-sodden playfulness. Songs about swamp-beasts in love, break-up songs about burning down libraries. Only she could get away with that shit.

The new song was rough right now, but her voice sounded nice. It was light and sweet, bringing back the good kind of memories. He never got sick of hearing her sing. She worked hard to be as good as she was, dedicated herself to the singer-songwriter thing and her schoolwork at the same time. That kind of hard work was something he could respect.

He winced when she made some foul notes on the piano. She was trying to harmonize her tune without knowing what she was doing. He could almost hear it, though, the harmony she was trying to create on the piano.

Stifling thoughts of their past deep into his belly, he knocked on the door.

The playing stopped, and the singing trailed off a little bit. He imagined her small form and bright hair making its way bouncily to the door.

“Felix!” she said, eyes wide. “Were you spying on me.”

“I was,” he said, glad that his mouth didn’t feel the need to deny it.

“Why? You wanted to hear me sing?”

“Your piano playing is awful.” He grimaced, unclear whether he was directing it at the piano playing or his own abrasive tone.

“Ugh, Felix, you’re evil. You know I don’t play the piano so well.” There was something to the great amounts of water under the bridge between them Anette could call him evil again and have it mean so little, more like a pinch on the elbow than a punch to the gut.

They both couldn’t help but realize how loaded the term was for them. She had called him ‘evil’ fondly when they were dating, and then she said it hatefully when they were breaking up. And now, was it possible she could say it as old friends?

“I was just trying to figure out how to harmonize this song. I want to keep the rhythm to the guitar, and have the piano play out the harmony,” she added, submitting the idea to Felix’s musical judgment. “Something a little new and a little nice, I think.”

“It’s nice,” he said, resisting the urge to hide his face in his hand, “This new song.”

“Thanks, Felix,” she said brightly.

“I could help you figure out the piano part if you want.” The words were out of his mouth before he had time to consider them.

“You would do that?”

“Well, it’s much better than hearing you struggle through it while I’m practicing.”

“Oh, okay then.” She stepped aside, letting him into the practice room with her.

“What’s the key?” he asked as he adjusted the stool for his much longer legs and sat dutifully at the keys.

Felix was patient as he helped Annette transcribe the key points of the harmony, matching it to the melody she was singing. He couldn’t help adding his own counter-themes and even a few flourishes.

Overall, it took them the better part of three hours, but they had hammered out the song. The achievement felt nice. After all, the song had a much more complex and mature sound than Annette’s usual. Felix felt a flex of pride for being there to help her step it up.

“It sounds so good, Felix! Thank you so much,” Annette was saying hugging the score he had just written for her to her chest.

“You better go make copies of that before you lose it,” he said. “So who’s going to play the piano part when you perform?” His question was more than curiosity. It was an invitation, and it also contained a measure of pride and arrogance. He was sure she was going to ask him to perform it when the time came.

“Oh,” Annette paused and looked around, reading the room a little too late. “Well, I was actually thinking of asking the Professor to perform it with me. You know—Byleth.”

Felix felt his swagger and good feelings come to a screeching halt. His cheeks burned red and his eyes narrowed, making him grateful that he had been looking down into his bag.

“Byleth?” he asked tightly. The name alone made him want to confront the minty green-haired demon with a sword and punch to the gut.

“You have your shift with her, right? Do you think she’ll say yes? She doesn’t share much of herself, but I think if someone asked her…”

“Sure—,” Felix grunted. “I’m sure she will.”

It only took Annette to few moments to catch onto his complete change in tone. “Oh, ‘Lix,” She dropped into his old nickname to mollify him. But it didn’t work. “I would ask you, but you’re so busy with your own performances. And your style is more formal. It’s so perfect when you play. But pop music isn’t supposed to be that perfect. Byleth makes a lot more mistakes than you do, but she has a good flow—”

“You’re rambling,” he cut in harshly. “I understand anyway.”

“I’ll definitely credit you for helping me write it, though!”

“Good,” Felix said and walked out. He knew his reaction had a been a little extreme. His feelings for Annette had all but dissipated over the past year, but that didn’t mean he was going to take her rejection well.

And there was the other part that stoked the harsh, fire-breathing feeling in his chest. He would have been able to react evenly if Annette had named any of the other pianists they knew. But it was Byleth, the one pianist at the University who had the capacity to outshine him. The taunt hung cruelly over his head.

* * *

**8\. but the words you want to hear**

With the weekend in its full flow, and Byleth found herself in town grading papers. A few text messages later, and Yuri caught up with her where she was sitting outside of Noble Tea.

His waify look made even less sense outside of the dark corners of the parties and the intimate enclosures of a bedroom, where they normally traded their kisses and sweet nothings. For the daytime, he had barely lined his eyes, opting for a pale shade of lavender on his eyelids. Normally it would highlighted his delicate features. But, when paired with his red-rimmed eyes and the barely concealed bags under them, he looked a little ill.

He had exams to grade too. Byleth couldn’t tell whether it was an arcane math class or physics. Differentials scrawled across the pages in awkward student handwriting. Equations resolved themselves into even more confusing forms. Yuri checked their rambling calculus logic, his small handwriting meticulous in soft grey.

She was grateful for the grading, it was a blessed thing they had in common. They worked quietly. She with just a cup of tea, her grading pen, and the students’ papers in front of her. Binder clips distinguished two piles: the graded and the yet-to-be.

He sprawled across the other side of the table. His personal journal poked out from under a pile of papers, on which perched a small espresso cup and another mug of tea. Precarious on the corner of the table was an empty dish that, for all of seven seconds, once held a chocolate croissant.

When she finished one of her papers, sliding it into the binder clip with the rest of the graded assignments, he looked up at her with his red-rimmed eyes, fingers a little twitchy.

“Hey friend,” he said breaking the silence. She looked up at him, not exactly smiling but hopefully open. “You cut out of there pretty quickly last night.”

“Mmm,” Byleth hummed, weighing her words. “I guess I wasn’t feeling it.”

“Maybe I noticed,” Yuri laughed not unkindly. “If I hadn’t saved you from picking fights with the undergrads…” Yuri’s voice trailed off, but there was a question there.

He was, she thought, perhaps trying to ask her if everything was okay. And not for the first time, she wondered if he wasn’t the one she really wanted to pick fights with.

“I get overprotective sometimes,” she said, hoping that was answer enough.

“And you battle them to protect them. That’s just like you,” he relaxed a little. “You know, the more I get to know you, the more I realize that big parties might be a little much for you. Maybe you’re too popular for your own good—need some time alone, hmmm?”

“That might be it,” she said, smiling back at the fond look he was giving her.

“Since there’s nothing going on tonight, maybe we can cook dinner and stay in. Just the two of us…”

“That sounds honestly wonderful.” Byleth had only tasted Yuri’s prized cooking one other time, but that was enough to crave it again.

“Excellent, I look forward to it.” It wasn’t a date. They weren’t dating and they weren’t a couple. Nonetheless, it put a nice lift in Byleth’s step, when she finished her grading and said goodbye to him with a kiss on the cheek.

She had some errands to run, books to grab from the library for her own research. And if she managed her time well, she would be able to slip into the practice rooms for a quick joust with Beethoven. And if Felix was the one playing the perfect Bach Fugue in the far practice room—bruised knuckles and all—she didn’t bat her eye at it, simply electing to go to the room on the far opposite of the hall.

* * *

**9\. you will never hear from me**

When Yuri knocked on her door that evening, Byleth was almost giddy with anticipation. She slowed her pace to open the door, her palms flattening the cables of her tight sweater-dress against her thighs.

There was Yuri at the door, eyeliner crisp and clean, a little sparkle now in his purple eyeshadow. Septum rubbed raw and pink, and eyes even redder than when she had seen him that morning.

Was he coming down with a cold? Had he been crying, and was she supposed to comfort him? No, something else was wrong here. Aside from his puffy eyes, there were no tear stains in his pristine makeup.

“Good evening,” he said coming in and kissing her lips. She had the sudden urge to dodge away from him.

“Um Hi,” Byleth said noticing his empty hands. “Yuri, did you bring the groceries?”

“Groceries?…” he asked slowly, as if the text messages they had sent just that afternoon, when he had volunteered to pick up groceries for their dinner, were a distant memory.

“You texted that you would bring them,” Byleth said impatiently.

“Oh…” Yuri put his head to his palm in a show of consternation. Byleth almost used her quick reflexes to stop him from crushing his perfect hair, but she held herself back. She could feel her eyes narrowing. “It must have slipped my mind, By. Do you think we can throw something together with what you have.”

“We could, but it’s not going to be nearly as good.” When Yuri did nothing by look vaguely apologetic, she relented to make the most of it. “Well come on then.” Byleth turned her back on Yuri’s gut-punched expression.

“Hmm,” Byleth began opening half-empty cupboards willing herself to feel inspired. “I have noodles and a few vegetables. Check the fridge, could you help me throw together a sauce from what’s in there?”

She knew she was being overly to-the-point about dinner. After all, this whole setup was nothing more than a glorified booty call, right? But she was hungry, and she had been looking forward to eating something good.

“These mushrooms will help. And some wine,” he said taking stock.

“That we can do,” relief tinged Byleth’s voice.

Dinner came along limpingly. Byleth tearlessly chopped onions, and Yuri stirred them into the sauce pot, while the pasta water began to boil.

As the vegetables began to simmer, Yuri stepped closer to Byleth, pressing his thin body against hers, while the counter dug into her back.

Thus the kisses began. Sometimes the kisses were soft and sweet, and she appreciated being appreciated this way. And sometimes they were hard and hungry, and she liked that too. These, however, were lazy, bored, and tired. No experimentation, no hunger.

“Oooh,” Byleth made her voice overly excited when she heard the onions in the pan sizzling. She gently pushed Yuri away from her. He gave little resistance, his body moveable, lazy, limp. She turned away to stir in more vegetables. “This smells so good, are you as hungry as I am?”

“Probably not,” Yuri said with a little laugh. “I don’t have much of an appetite right now actually.”

Byleth was disappointed. Her voice made a small, “Oh.”

“You should eat though,” he said brightening up, “I like seeing a woman eat and enjoy herself.”

“Sure. But can I ask you something?”

“Ask away, friend.” She wished he would stop calling her that.

“Did you get high before coming over here?” She couldn’t stop her eyes from glancing back at his still pink septum and the way he kept brushing his hand against it, as if there was a phantom there he couldn’t shake.

“No.” His eyes were glossy wide. Liberal use of eye drops before he came inside, Byleth assumed. “Not right before, I mean, it’s been a few hours. I should be out of it now.” He said it as if offering a gift, as if because the good part of the drugs had worn off, it meant he was clean for her.

“So you’re coming down right now?” She said evenly. She tapped into the same voice she used when telling a student they had a wrong answer without wanting to shame them.

“Well maybe,” he said, twitching his hand up to his nose unconsciously. Now that she had drawn their attention to it, he wouldn’t be able to avoid doing it, and she wouln’t be able to avoid noticing.

She nodded solemnly. It would have been better if he had come over high as a kite. She hated being the person he came down around. In fact, that particular frustration was one of the few strong emotions she felt for him.

“I still want to be here with you, though.” There was a little plea in his voice, and she would have felt bad kicking him out like that.

He came into her space for another kiss, hoping to make it better, hoping to convince her of how present he was for her.

That kiss was slow, and more ardent than the first had been, but something had closed inside of Byleth, and she couldn’t let him in. She kissed back for another moment, willing herself into it. When he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, she wondered with a brief disgust if their light dusting of makeup would mix.

“This isn’t what I want,” she said into Yuri’s swollen red eyes. Her face was blank like a mask.

“What do you mean?” Yuri’s beautiful eyes grew wide. His gorgeous face looked almost more attractive in how taken aback it was.

“I like you. As a person, you’re interesting. But I don’t like how we spend our time together. I think that there’s something—that there are better arrangements for the both of us.”

“You don’t want to see each other anymore?” Yuri’s red-rimmed eyes were narrowed, skeptical. The glitter on his eyelids twinkled mockingly.

“No, but we can keep being friends.”

“Okay,” he said shrugging and grimacing at the same time. “Okay.”

There would be no heartbreak, but he was rattled. And she was rattled.

“I’m going to go then, enjoy your dinner.”

Byleth removed the sauce from heat and slumped down in a kitchen chair, her head falling into her hand. She didn’t entirely understand why she felt it necessary to call things off right then. Things with Yuri had been going smoothly, carnal and beautiful, right?

She desperately needed to talk to someone about it. Reaching across the table to her phone, she scrolled to the top of her messages list.

There was Claude’s name where he had given her his number at the party the night before. That was another line she was about to cross. After all, Claude’s name had been among the papers she had just graded that morning. But it was just a text, and she needed a friend.

Byleth: Hi Claude. Can we talk friend-to-friend?

She avoided looking at her phone again until she received a notification. It had only been a few minutes.

Claude: Hi Teach! Those are my favorite conversations. What’s on you mind?

Then, Byleth typed out long messages, telling Claude about breaking things off with Yuri, and how she felt rattled and confused.

She watched as the message indicator told her that Claude was there on the other side, typing and erasing, thinking carefully about what to say. She had to stifle the impatience that made her want to type “WELL????”.

Claude: I don’t think you’re ‘rattled’ because you regret cutting things off with Y

Claude: It’s more like you made a big choice

Claude: I mean, you decided you don’t want Yuri. And remember how deciding what you don’t want is one way to know what you do want

Byleth: Like what we talked about last night.

Claude: Well, going around breaking hearts is a destructive way of figuring out what you’re passionate about

Byleth: I didn’t break his heart. This wasn’t about hearts.

Byleth wasn’t sure she had ever been involved in something that was about hearts. All of her flings started as something physical and peaked if they made their way to decent companionship.

Claude: Okay sure

Claude: Anyway, seems like this was a learning experience. You’ve learned about something you don’t like. You’re rattled by taking the choice into your own hands. And now you can find something you do like

Byleth: So what do I do now?

Claude: Idk. Keep making choices like that, you’ll figure it out

Claude: Play music?

Byleth: Thanks, Claude

Claude: Anytime, Teach

* * *

**10\. fused out of iron**

In the weeks since Byleth had begun ‘finding her feelings’, as Claude would later put it, she found them to be a lot. A whole lot.

She stifled the urge to call her dad. To begin with, she didn’t know how to ask him if he ever felt overwhelmed by a complex of feelings. But she was also sure that he would just laugh at her.

For a musician, he wasn’t very good at talking about emotions or whatever. They only ever talked about romance whenever Byleth got him drunk enough to bring up Sitri, her deceased mother. It was the same old refrain— he had loved her, she was the entire world to him, and maybe someday Byleth find such a person as this.

A phone call would amount to Byleth admitting that she still hadn’t found her Sitri and was still resorting to lazy hookups. It’s not the sort of thing that makes a dad proud.

Byleth began by finding new buddies to grade with. She shared a table with Edelgard and Hubert at Noble Tea, as she worked her way through yet another round of papers. Ferdinand dazzled by their table, refilling Hubert’s coffee and dropping off free profiteroles sent by Mercedes from the back kitchen. Of course, this didn’t stop Hubert from sending Byleth annoyed looks when she chuckled about the Claude and Lorenz’s competing ideals.

Trying to attain normalcy, she went to a show at Mach, where she smiled into Sylvain’s flirting. That is, until the boy suddenly went cold and angry, yelling at her about all the pressure his parents put on him. He even brought up Byleth’s own lack of ambitions and how she should count herself lucky rather than whining about it. He called her a spoiled little brat, growing up with the freedom to do whatever she wanted.

There had been a fury in Sylvain’s face that made her run cold behind the blank mask of her face. She was ready to throw a punch if it came to that. But, then, his face cleared up, smiles below and cold eyes above, laughing about how he was kidding. She noted his expression as part of her emotional education—that pressure and lack of freedom, it was another kind of hurt to which she had yet been inured.

In those weeks, Byleth had picked up Debussey under her nimble fingers, like she hadn’t since she was younger. She had originally learned the pieces as a way of processing feelings about her mom. When her mouth couldn’t talk about what was bothering her, her fingers picked their way across _Reverie_ to let her know that something inside her understood loss. Now she played the Debussey to remember who she was when she first played those pieces.

Byleth also had to take up the familiar reflex of shrugging off rumors that were spreading about her. They said that she and Yuri had broken off their fling because she was frigid. Because she couldn’t really feel anything. The cruelest of the rumors accused Byleth of looking down on the rest of them.

Not everyone was saying it, though. Edelgard was surprisingly warm to her about the whole thing. Annette and Mercedes still treated her like their favorite novelty. If her own students were swapping the rumors about her, they kept it under wraps. Perhaps Claude was keeping them in line with help from Hilda, his pink-haired enforcer, who seemed to respect Byleth all the more once rumors of her dirty fling and subsequent frigidity began to spread.

In those two weeks, Yuri had started something with Bernadetta. The talented poet was writing songs for him. It was fortunate for Byleth’s bruised ego that Bernadetta was so reclusive, as she hardly had to see the two together. But she heard of their cuteness from others, and how they seemed to fit together like old friends.

From the few times she talked to Hapi and the other grad students, it appeared that whatever happened in Bernadetta’s closed bedroom, Yuri wasn’t getting high before visiting her. There were even a few whispers of the l-word between them.

That stung a little bit. Not that Byleth wanted that with Yuri. But she did want that sometime with someone, didn’t she? Ugh, how tedious.

Byleth knew her heart was never really hanging in the balance between all these events. But she felt then a certain kind of misery all the same.

She wanted drones hammering in her ears at max max max volume all the time, until her teeth just ached with it, and her ears were as sore as if she were standing in the front row of a big venue concert. She wanted the clash of feedback, the pang of dissonance, the purest disruption.

In those weeks, Byleth had taken to haunting the practice rooms, hoping to catch the sound of other musicians. This started one evening when she happened to overhear Seteth playing on his cello. Then there was one other, a pianist who had taken to working their way through Chopin’s book of _Nocturnes_. The number of times she found herself leaning on the wall outside that door was a secret she kept to herself.

The bittersweet dopamine of music made her smile tenderly, made her ache tremendously. The feelings hit hard: standing by as her previous sexual partner making sexual partners with another, watching her students pass through her classroom each day tittering about their hopes and fears and needs and wants, having her adviser chastise her for her lack of passion in her thesis research.

The music, her one faith, helped her bring it all home. Her greatest shot of serotonin. The spike of feeling that could almost bring her to tears. She wanted it to echo so loudly in her body, to lend her its beat as her own heartbeat.

* * *

**11\. hanging from a hit**

It was late on a Friday evening, and the past few days had been as bland as any.

Byleth’s shift at Mach the previous night had be a silent, awkward affair. Case in point, she and Felix had been the only ones in the building. He spent a lot of the time glaring her and huffing whenever she asked him to do some chores. Since it was too cold to sit outside, Byleth hid away in the reading room.

The other pianist might have relished the empty coffeehouse, but Byleth was grateful when Hubert came by forty minutes before closing. He played a close game of chess with her and spoke in riddles about some of the ambitions Edelgard had for Mach. Byleth wasn’t sure if it was comforting to see him because they were friends or because she had won the game.

Anyway, she was looking forward to this empty, planless Friday night. Mach was putting on a show, but she had already decided not to go. It gave her a good chance of finding the practice rooms empty. She bounced down the stairs looking forward to having the space to clear her mind.

But someone was already there playing. It was that student of Chopin tonight, flawlessly rendering a famous Nocturne. Byleth could hear the tender perfection even through the practice room door.

For the first time, she allowed herself to wonder who might be behind that door. Another instructor? The star of the music program, Felix? No surely he would be at the Mach show tonight, and she had never heard him play anything besides Bach. Certainly he wouldn’t play something so emotional. The Nocturne had phrases that could make the back of even Byleth’s throat hurt with feeling.

Rather than isolating herself at the end of the practice hall, she impulsively stepped into the room next to the Chopin player. She warmed up by tracing soft soft scales, practiced so often they might as well have been tattooed into her hands. Adagios flitted in pirouettes across the keys.

This training was more a part of her psychological foundation than the histories she spouts in class or the research she was doing for her degree. These drills felt like the only thing that should make sense. Was this, then, the thing she wanted? To be alone and playing the piano.

The pianist in the next room ended the exquisite piece, shifting their focus to one of Chopin’s more advanced Nocturnes _Number 13 in C minor_. The muffling of the soundproofed walls deprived Byleth of many of the notes that she so achingly wanted to hear.

Alone though? Yet, here she was choosing even passively to be next to another musician, to hear someone playing beside her.

When her drills weren’t enough, she melded them into her Debussey repertoire. Keeping her notes quiet, she blended the pieces together seamlessly without stopping.

The thrill of key changes were like a promise in the back of her mind. Things can change. Each season feels different. All it takes is the shift from one scale and orientation, from a minor key to its relative major key.

Caught up in her own practice, Byleth wasn’t paying attention anymore when the piece next door concluded. She didn’t know it when the skilled fingers raised off the ivories and hovered in a practiced gesture before falling into the other pianist’s lap.

She wouldn’t have known that the head bowed briefly over the keys. A dark pony-tail drifted forward, before man set his jaw and walked out of the practice room. He left his things in the room to make his decision more resolute.

Byleth was still tracing moonbeams across the keyboard, when he opened the door to her practice room without knocking.

Certainly, Byleth was aware of the door opening, the presence standing behind her, watching her fingers, the music no longer playing in the room next door. But she was also aware of the promise of the next run in her left hand and her need for it—how she needed it, needed it—the smooth clarity of a slightly unorthodox scale fitting just so into the ethereal melody of the piece.

For his part, Felix was grateful that she didn’t stop playing even when she sensed his presence. He shrunk into the back wall by the door watching her play. He thought he felt her hesitate right before the end, as if she was tempted to keep playing, to prolong the piece and morph it into another. He could feel the moment she decided against it and then abruptly ended the song, gracelessly pulling her fingers from the keys.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked suddenly so much stiffer than the pliant rubato she had been tracing on the keys.

“I wanted to see you play for myself,” Felix said crossing the small distance from one side of the practice room to stand alongside the piano.

Byleth turned toward him, swinging one leg to crook it on top of the stool.

“So you have now…” She stated the obvious, hoping that it would draw out whatever it was he really wanted.

She noticed the soft way that the ends of Felix’s ponytail drifted against the back of his neck. The way his eyes bored into her intently before shifting away. He looked more comfy tonight than he did last night when he was on shift with her at Mach, wearing soft looser jeans rolled at the bottom and a lightweight black sweatshirt.

“Listening to you play is… not bad.”

“Same to you,” she said, softening a little when she saw Felix blush lightly and look down into the pedals of the piano. She fiddled with tucking her hair behind her ears, using her fingertip to trace the line of one of her more stubborn waves before breaking the silence again. “I’ve never heard you play Chopin before. It’s a nice change of pace. That last Nocturne you played, it’s so sad and beautiful.”

Felix nodded but she could feel the room grow tense. “Interesting to know that you feel sadness.”

If the quip annoyed her, she didn’t let it show. Something else was going on that she wasn’t aware of. She wasn’t sure if it was her mentioning the Chopin or if he was gearing up to say something, but he looked even harsher and more inflexible than ever.

“I want you to teach me,” he spat out, looking at somewhere beside her.

“Teach you? Don’t be silly. You have your pick of real instructors here.” Byleth could feel the puzzled expression on her face, a breach in her usual mask.

“I’m never silly.” Felix said.

“Why do you want to me ‘teach’ you? You’re an excellent pianist already. I can’t play that Nocturne.” Byleth hoped that flattering him a little bit would keep him from yelling at her.

“You probably haven’t tried either.”

Byleth shrugged, and Felix took it as an invitation to continue. “I want to learn to play like you. Your flexible method. The way you improvised from one piece into another just now—I can’t do that. I only play music as it’s written. And the instructors here only want me to get better at what I already play, they want me to specialize and become known for this one way. To be the best, though, I need to understand it all.”

“You want to play like me?”

Felix seemed to think for a moment. He rested his chin into his fist and bowed his head slightly. It would have looked demure if the rest of his posture wasn’t so haughty. Apparently, he had decided to switch tracks, because the next thing he said was, “You know what they’re saying about you—that you’re cold, you’re frigid.”

Yes, ever since she had called it quits with Yuri. It was the Ashen Demon thing all over again. She was cold, Byleth had no deeper feelings.

“Why should I worry about that?” But she could feel her voice squeak in betrayal. Her real questions was, _why would you even bring that up?_

“Worry or not, I don’t care. What I’m trying to say is, I know that you’re not—frigid. Because I’ve heard you play music. You play like there’s a demon inside of you. Like it’s life or death, like you’re discovering another world, and there’s a hunger. That’s what I want.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to _say_ anything. I’m asking you to teach me, that’s all.”

“And how do you expect me to do that? Lean over the piano as you play and critique your metrically perfect rhythm. If you need a reminder to stop counting and start—” she almost said _feeling_ but stopped herself for a better word “—exaggerating the notes, then you should do it yourself. You can write it into your scores if that helps.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Byleth raised her eyebrows. So he did have a plan. “I found a duet that would work for us. I want to try to duet with you, to learn from you.”

Byleth knew he was saying ‘duet’ but all she could hear was ‘duel.’ An image flashed into her mind of the two of them, standing agile with swords in their hands, circling and preparing to strike. The thought sent a thrill right up her spine.

“What work?” she asked, curious despite her misgivings.

Taking it as an invitation, he went back into the other practice room to get his bag, extracting the sheet music that he checked out from the music library earlier that day. Six pieces by Rachmaninoff, and they began, he thought, savoring the memory of the haunting little gondola bells she had intoned at the open concert, with a boat song.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhat comforting, during scary times like these, to sink into some escapism. If you're reading this, please take care and stay safe!
> 
> The story isn't very saucy right now, more romance begins in the next chapter. But if you're anything like me, imagining Felix playing Chopin's Nocturne 13 is _very alluring_.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


	3. Theme Russe: Falling Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- The Ashen Demon scaring everyone with her demonic piano skills  
> \- A phone call from Rodrigue  
> \- Byleth pining  
> \- Felix lying  
> \- Tea, cards, and friends  
> \- Some good chemistry and some bad chemistry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phweff, this section bloomed out to be pretty long. I didn't want to split it up, since I originally drafted the fic in six sections to match the duet of Rachmaninoff’s 6 Morceaux, and I intend to stick to that scheme (dammit!).
> 
> I also put together a [currently WIP for my own reference] playlist of the majority of the music mentioned, quoted, or played throughout the fic. You're welcome to listen if you're curious about what they might sound like--[find it here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57EBQl19oaRDIEXm4LwPCJ?si=Q8vVKJT6Q--GXMU32YMeEQ).

**12\. we can pretend that they don’t know our name**

Next to Felix, Dorothea tapped her finger on the lineup paper for the Open Concert, eager for the pageant to begin. This time, the list of student names had been printed on off-white paper a hair thicker than the previously-used copy paper. Evidently, someone has convinced Dean Seteth to splurge a little. Dorothea’s fern-green eyes roamed between the lineup and the diminished crowd in the theater.

Peeking at the names, Felix drew in a hissing breath. The first thing he noticed was that Seteth placed Byleth in the finale spot. Felix would be playing a few spots before with Dorothea directly following him. The next thing he noticed was what Byleth intended to play Ligetti’s _Etude 13,_ _the Devil’s Staircase_. Not only did the piece flaunt a reputation for being wickedly hard, but it was also discordant, eschewed melody, and its disorder set Felix’s teeth on edge, like biting down on a metal fork.

“She can play that?” He heard himself say out loud.

Dorothea easily guessed who he was talking about. “Byleth? Apparently she’s a secret expert on demon music. She said that her dad used to have a fascination with them—like all the metalheads we know, huh? Did you know they used to call her the Ashen Demon in her undergrad?”

Felix just shook his head. Byleth sat in her usual spot beside Seteth, jaw against her fist like haughty royalty. When someone called out to her she turned stiffly and waved, her face remaining empty like a mask.

Since Felix had managed to convinced her to duet with him, the rest of the weekend had passed without incident. Byleth had clearly looked through the music he gave her, at least to the spot where he had written his phone number. He knew, because she had sent him a tiny, dry message, saying only “This is Byleth.”

The chair beside her remained empty.

Again, Dorothea seemed to be reading his mind. “ _Oh yeah_ ,” she said emphatically, “look here and get ready to wave.” He followed her lead and the two of them leaned out to look down their row of seats. At the opposite end was the lavender-haired Yuri sitting with Bernadetta. Dorothea waved first and the other two waved back. Bernadetta was looking like she had just swallowed a live frog.

“He and Byleth called it quits weeks ago.” Dorothea whispered theatrically once they settled against the back of their seat. “But now he’s been hanging out with Bernadetta _a lot_. And he’s even performing tonight, which is a first. Just some gossip, you know,” she waved her hand airily, but Felix could tell that he was the subject of her perceptive scrutiny.

Nor did that feeling of being watched dissipate, as Annette and Mercedes walked in and sat down next to Byleth. “It is kind of a tangled web, isn’t it...” Dorothea mused.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You know, the night before she broke things off with Yuri, Byleth was last arguing with you at a party.” Felix was determined not to give her an inch of reaction. “Well, and I also heard that she had a long conversation with Claude on the back porch.” Again he said nothing.

When Dorothea grew sick of the silence, she said, “Fine, keep your secrets, Felix. Just know, if you need help with anything, I’m here.”

“What secrets do you think I have?” Felix grunted out.

“I think you like her,” Dorothea said lowering her voice as the lights dimmed. All Felix could see was the back of Byleth’s minty green head, which reflected a surprising amount of light in the dark theater.

“Like her?” he growled. “I don’t even know her.”

The Open Concert rang with stress and discord this time around. Music assaulted them in all different styles. Perhaps the students were growing bold with their experimentation. Perhaps they were just bad. Felix tuned out most of the performances, waiting for the moment that he could play and then cut out of there.

And yet, when Yuri stood to sing, Felix could only look at Byleth, observing her careful mask. He watched Byleth clap, polite and disinterested. Did she really not care at all? How could she be so casual?

Felix thought back to all the conversations they’d had—how different she seemed with him. When Felix said something prurient or stupid, Byleth showed open annoyance. When he threw too many punches during a show, she demonstrated a clear concern. He thought about the competitive way she accepted the deal they’d made for their duet. He considered the how she greeted him so warmly every evening they had shift together, despite him showing up late and barely sharing any words throughout the shifts.

Felix had seen her mask had fall and slip, and the person he saw behind it was… Well, there was one way he could express it.

When Felix’s turn to play came up, he had already decided to change what he would play. The paper stated that Felix would drone on with more of his usual Bach, but he had another trick up his sleeve. If he did it right, if he played it well, maybe then he could spark some emotion in Byleth’s face and slip aside her mask. From his portfolio, Felix pulled out his Chopin _Nocturnes_. Almost automatically, the creased spine, opened to _Nocturne 13 in C minor_ , the piece that had lit up Byleth’s eyes before.

Once on stage, he indulged a moment to burn his stare at her, willing the flatness out of her eyes. Then, he put his fingers to the keys and let the soft, emotive piece begin.

It felt different playing for Byleth. He hadn’t focused his playing for solely one person in the crowd since he lost Glenn. He wanted to stir her by crescendoing as intensely and as turbulently as he could. He could feel her eyes when he pounded those loud octaves, and he could imagine her breath hitching when he struck the piano as loudly as he could. He broke through that piece, until there was no more fooling around. The triplet section had come, and he would have to sweep along with it.

His hands lifted from the keys using the same clean, practiced gesture with which he ended everything, and he stared into Byleth’s eyes. Her reward was a bittersweet half-smile, paltry, broken, and all that she could manage from the shrapnel of her emotions.

The rest of the applause was unwelcome, a bull-like reminder to Felix that they weren’t the only two in the theater. Could everyone see how rosy his cheeks were as he walked off the stage? Chalk it up to the heat from the stage lights.

The interim three pieces before Byleth played dragged an eternity. However, Felix didn’t even consider leaving.

Byleth’s mask remained intact, when she settled herself at the piano for the finale. What’s more, she carried no sheet music—she had the wicked, discordant piece memorized. Felix listened, trying to keep an open mind to the piece that was so contrastive to the way melody worked (so much so that its unorthodox 12/8 time signature was a mere ‘suggestion’). Beneath her fingers, the notes—

formed a stabbing, jabbing dirty-whirl of dire blows—  
circling around itself in frustrated cycles and repetitions—  
while almost-harmonies crept quietly in shades before collapsing across their own stems—  
seeking release from relentless scales and progressions—  
days in and days out—  
days that fizzled in acid and were recomposed from their scraps.

From the sound of it, Felix could hear Byleth unraveling and coming apart at the seams. Still, her face remained clear of emotion, leaving her fingers to voice all the frustration, annoyance, agitation. Felix hung on every note, marveling at her mercenary sword-work—cool composure above and perfect control with every emotive stroke.

She gave the final, sustained chords their due, before rising to slightly shocked, slightly confused applause.

“So that was the Ashen Demon,” Felix heard Dorothea breathe next to him. “It was technically perfect, right? So why do I feel so bruised and battered from it?”

Felix had no time to dissect the matter with Dorothea. He had no time for Annette’s and Mercedes’ shocked looks as they took in the sea change that Byleth’s style had undergone. He had no time to see Yuri tilt his head toward Bernadetta, laughing as if Byleth’s skillful fury was a bullet he had dodged. And he definitely didn’t have time for Seteth to confront him about switching to a Chopin piece that wasn’t recorded in Felix’s official repertoire.

He had no time, because Byleth was leaving. She was walking out without saying goodbye to anyone, and he had to catch her. He didn’t know what he would say to the cold mask she was wearing. He just knew he had to catch her.

Byleth was fast, though, and she knew how to pull away from the group. Walking swiftly behind her in the night, Felix was about to give himself up and call out to her to wait, when his phone rang. It was the loud, obnoxious symphony programmed just for Rodrigue.

Hearing the ringtone, Byleth turned around to see Felix there. Her face still under the mask, she waved to him before speeding quickly on her way.

Felix grimaced that he had lost her. Picking up the phone, he heard Rodrigue’s too-familiar, “Felix?” on the line.

“What, old man?”

“Hello Felix. I’m delighted that you answered your phone.” When Felix made no response, Rodrigue continued with feigned nonchalance. “Dimitri messaged me to say that you played Chopin tonight.” 

So Dimitri had been in the audience. The thought of it built on Felix’s omnipresent foundation of anger.

“What of it?” he asked, wishing he had managed to make the words sound even harsher.

“Dimitri said you sounded ‘wonderful’—his words. Just like Glenn used to.”

Felix grimaced.

“I wanted to let you know that if you want to change your specialty, you could consider going Romantic period. There’s a lot you’d have to work on, but—”

“I don’t want to change my specialty.”

“And the sudden Chopin was…”

“A fluke—” _A gift, for a friend._ “Won’t happen again.”

“With your skills, you can play whatever you want, Felix. Just because Chopin was Glenn’s focus—”

“I have to go, old man,” and he hung up before he could feel any more annoyed.

Felix couldn’t tell what irked him more, that his dad had interrupted him when he was going to talk to Byleth? or that Dimitri had taken it upon himself to text his dad, (and apparently everyone else he knew—as he saw when he looked down at his phone—) that he had played Chopin at the open concert.

The Boar had texted him during the concert itself.

 _Dimitri:_  
_Chopin, huh?_  
[sent 7:43pm]

And after that he had received a series of trickled-in texts:

 _Sylvain:_  
_Heard you played chopin?_  
[sent 7:55pm]

 _Ingrid:_  
_Hey felix, let me know if you need to talk about anything._  
[sent 8:01pm]

And the last one came from his dad, just seconds ago after he hung up the phone.

 _Rodrigue:_  
_Whatever you play, I’d like to hear you soon._  
[sent 8:06pm]

Felix wanted to avoid Sylvain and his too-knowing expressions. So he headed straight home to shut himself into his own room before Sylvain would get off his shift at Mach.

Grateful for the quiet of his room, until his phone buzzed yet again and Felix had the sudden urge to slam it against the wall. As he keyed into the lock screen, he swore that another message from either his dad or Dimitri would require him to terminate his phone completely.

Luckily, it wasn’t either. Instead, he saw the new name he had programmed into the phone just the other day.

 _Byleth:_  
_Was that Chopin for me?_  
[sent 9:34pm]

Felix answered quickly, knowing that any concerns for self-preservation went out the window when he decided to chase her out of the concert.

 _Felix:_  
_What makes you say that?_  
[sent 9:35pm]

Had she been wandering around her own room—perhaps lying on her bed, back stretched out and knees folded up—deciding, and then chickening out, and then deciding again whether or not to text him about this?

 _Byleth:_  
_You were staring at me from the stage._  
[sent 9:39pm]

Felix felt a blush rise from his chest up to his ears. He had meant it to be obvious, so she would see. It was an act of communication. Now, though, it just felt silly and foolish.

 _Byleth:_  
_Although, considering it was you, I probably should have taken that as a threat, right?_  
[sent 9:41pm]

Felix bristled at this. How could she even talk about his competitive streak when she fought with him every chance she got.

 _Felix:_  
_No._  
[sent 9:42pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Well, either way, I liked it._  
[sent 9:43pm]  
  
_That piece really suits you._  
[sent 9:43pm]

It’s not that Felix was displeased. If she had said those things earlier in the evening, he would have been downright gratified. Now, though, after talking with his dad and hearing from Dimitri, the victory felt hollow. The performance no longer felt like a sacred thing, shared between the two of them.

 _Felix:_  
_Your devils staircase was good too_  
[sent 9:45pm]

 _But I don’t like the piece and I think it scared the others_  
[sent 9:46pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_If you think that’s scary, don’t google my name._  
[sent 9:48pm]

 _Felix:_  
_I didn’t say I was scared_  
[sent 9:49pm]

 _But why not?_  
[sent 9:49pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Because my name comes from Beleth, a demon lord of hell._  
[sent 9:51pm]

 _Some people think he looks like a cat though, and I read that he can be nice sometimes. My dad was into some weird stuff back then._  
[sent 9:53pm]

Dads? Felix thought bitterly. Now there’s a topic he didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

 _Felix:_  
_A cat demon, huh?_  
[sent 10:01pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Silly as it sounds._  
[sent 10:03pm]

It absolutely suited her.

 _Felix:_  
_My name means lucky one. But if you google it you’ll find a lot of cats too._  
[sent 10:06pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_The other musicians wouldn’t find us nearly so intimidating if they knew this about us._  
[sent 10:07pm]

 _Felix:_  
_Let’s hope they never learn how to use google_  
[sent 10:08pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Ha. ha. Anyway, I just wanted to say that you sounded great._  
[sent 10:10pm]

 _And thanks._  
[sent 10:12pm]

Normally Felix wouldn’t have been able to stand how cryptic this was, and would have pushed her to explain exactly what she was thanking him for. But stuff like that made him a pain in the ass. Perhaps she was saying thanks for the Nocturne, or thanks for the compliments, or something else entirely.

He framed a few phrases under his fingers. _Maybe we could do one of these open concerts together sometimes_ , he almost wrote. _Don’t talk to the boar about me, okay?_ , was another. He even thought about typing _Goodnight, Byleth_ , but then decided that would be much too intimate. Was Dorothea right about him?

Before he could settle on anything to say, though, Byleth had already typed another message, and he had missed his chance.

 _Byleth:_  
_Anyway, see you Thursday._  
[sent 10:20pm]

 _Felix:_  
_Yeah see you thursday_  
[sent 10:21pm]

Felix let the phone tumble onto the mattress, its job completed. He was barely conscious of his other hand reaching up to let down his hair. That wasn’t perfect, as far as conversations go, but—if he was any judge—it might have gone pretty well.

* * *

**13\. the cactus where your heart should be**

That Thursday, Byleth and Felix had finished opening Mach Coffehouse early, both of them efficient with their chores.

Normally, once they were open, the two of them would take up their individual quiet positions. Byleth favored the reading room. She perched herself on the couch as if she were sitting stiffly on a narrow piano stool, as if there weren’t feet of cushion for her to sprawl across. The rest of the couch would be covered in no less than four books of music criticism or political theory.

Felix tended to steer clear of the reading room, considering it was where Annette had spent the majority of her time last year. For a while after they had called it quits, he felt like the room itself had rescinded its welcome to him. Those old habits die hard.

He wondered if this shift would be as quiet as the last few. Thursday night shifts at Mach brought in a steady gathering toward the beginning of each semester, but as the semester grew busier with responsibilities, exams, and papers, the other students tended to clear out.

The Thursday late shift at Mach from the previous year had been a rowdy one. Dorothea and Caspar always managed to instigate a small party. The usual result was closing Mach early, locking the door, someone sneaking in bum wine and malt liquor, playing music over the speakers, and ceding to a circle of gossip and banter.

Somehow, he doubted that he and Byleth would be starting something like that. They weren’t the sort. If they were going to do anything in that creaky old coffeehouse after close, it would be challenging each other at the piano, until their fingers were numb and they were both so annoyed that they would begrudgingly concede. If Felix’s fantasy strayed to anything beyond that, he’d never tell.

No, Thursday night shifts were much more low-key with him and Byleth holding down the fort. Recently, it had just been a few people at a time trickling in and out.

And profits? What profits? The university tolerated the coffeehouse for its ability to keep some of the wilder subcultures in line. That alone made Felix wonder why he was there at all. And then he would look at Byleth, who swiped him furtive looks whenever he caught her attention, and he had to think that it was better than being in his room anyway.

“Do you want some tea?” Byleth called out to him.

“What kind?” he asked, suspicious of the tea they served at Mach. Edelgard let the others get away with purchasing all sorts of disgusting sweet and herbal teas. He liked the sharper kinds, harsh pine needles with an acidic bite or a smoky lapsang.

“It’s an intense cinnamon and pekoe blend that Ferdinand usually makes for Hubert.”

That’ll do, Felix thought. “Okay, yeah, I’ll take some.”

“I haven’t tried it yet myself, he just gave it to me the other day.”

“He gave you some tea?” Felix asked, his eyes drifting down to the music history book he had slapped onto the table. Ferdinand did run a tea shop, but was he in the habit of giving away samples of unbrewed tea blends?

“More accurately,” Byleth said, taking the boiling water off the hot plate, “I won it from him in a game of cards.” Felix could hear the smirk in her voice.

Once she had the tea fixed up into two mismatching mugs, she set one down in front of Felix next to his book. Then she took the other outside with her to sit on the porch. Felix scowled at the book as if it had wronged him, before grabbing his own mug and following her outside.

Byleth had settled on the porch steps, looking stiff and uncomfortable while also entirely at home. Felix sat down beside her, leaving a good measure between the two of them. It wasn’t enough for someone to comfortably get up the stairs, but they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

Byleth looked surprised to see him come out with her. “What?” he asked, meeting her green eyes in challenge. He held his mug in both hands, allowing them to wrap around and cover as much surface as possible to absorb the warmth.

“You usually don’t spend time with me out here. I thought you must hate having me on shift.” It was infuriating how blunt she could be sometimes. It’s not that he minded what she said, just that it sometimes made him blush and feel foolish.

“No, I like working with you. It’s usually been a long day, and you don’t make me talk.” Byleth smiled skeptically, and Felix felt a flush of warmth in his chest. He would take it as a small victory: not only was he able to read her accurately, but she was also smiling at him. “Seriously,” he said, making the word into a demanding imperative, “Whenever I was on shift with Sylvain, I would want to leave within fifteen minutes. And last year I had my shift with Dorothea and she just kept talking at me whether I answered or not.”

“She does the same thing to me. But more often than not, I find it comforting.”

“Comforting?” It was his turn to smile skeptically.

“I like that she continues trying to hold the conversation, even when I don’t know what to say.” Then her tone dropped and flattened. “I’m pretty bad with words, if you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re fine,” Felix said, irked by her change in tone. He liked the competitive, confident Byleth. Whenever she dropped into being too self-conscious, he wanted to challenge her, fight with her, just to hear that smirk enter her voice again. He shook his head, “It’s hard to trust people who are too good with words anyway.”

“Thank you, but _you_ would say that,” Byleth quipped wryly.

Felix chuckled, and watched Byleth’s furtive eyes track his hand, as it teased at his hair where it was coming loose after another long day.

“I have a question for you.” She waited until Felix shrugged his invitation to continue. “Why did you start playing Bach?”

“I started playing music because I was expected to. But I wasn’t very good at it as a kid. I played poorly, no discipline. Bach gave me discipline and honed my skills.”

“Sometimes it seems like an odd match though...”

“Why?” Felix asked looking surprised. “Bach was a genius.”

“But don’t you find it restrictive?” He could tell that she was thinking of his Chopin and his dueting request.

“I just want to focus on developing my skills. Besides, it’s not Bach that’s the problem.”

“So what is the problem?”

“There isn’t a _problem_!” he could hear himself say too fiercely, but Byleth merely raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t afraid of him no matter how much bluster he threw at her.

“Okay, there is a problem.” Byleth merely nodded beside him. A tiny upturn at the corner of her mouth registering her victory at breaking through his bluster. “I don’t want to perform the way that others expect me to. The music and the playing is what I am. But I want it to be something special, not always trotted out in front of other people for entertainment.”

He spoke the words into Byleth’s eyes. He was hungry, he realize, for any reaction that wouldn’t bring up his father or brother. He wanted—he needed—an answer that would show that he was right about his confidence in her.

“You want to keep it to yourself?” she asked, and he relished her calm.

“Not exactly. When I play, I want it to matter. When I play for… myself,” he kicked himself for stumbling and almost saying, _when I play for you_ , “—and there are some others—then it matters. But there are a lot of times that I’m forced to perform for decorum and entertainment.”

“You just have to find that thing that you want to play for, that thing that drives you.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He said, willing the conversation to be over, while a conflicted part of him was hoping that Byleth would somehow know the right thing to do to draw them both closer. When nothing came, he said, “Thanks for the tea.”

Felix stood and retreated inside, textbooks spread across the table and his laptop in front of him, open to a paper due at noon the next day. The screen door was propped open, and he could see Byleth sipping her tea and reading on the porch.

It didn’t take long after his leaving, before her signature cloud of smoke began trailing up by her head. He thought about her practiced French inhale, breathing fire to the dragon inside of her. It wasn’t just that Byleth was easy to fight with, she could also be easy to talk to. Hidden behind the screen of his computer, he let himself smile.

* * *

**14\. so don't pretend that you don't feel the pull**

The next part of Byleth’s emotional education had her head spinning, worse than drinking a gin cocktail too late at night. When did it happen?

It had something to do with hearing Felix play his Chopin Nocturne no. 13 at the concert. His rhythm so perfect and clean, giving gravitas to a simple piece that reminded Byleth of meandering through garden pathways paved in iridescent seashells. Between his loud sforzandos and his careful playing with all ten fingers on the keys, the piece had stolen her breath like she was winded from screaming at a metal concert. But she would never tell anyone that.

She supposed that must have been when it began. And she told herself it was the music overwhelming her, not the musician. Except that, it could have also been the way he had started sending her text messages when he heard her in the practice room. Sometimes they were critical and other times they offered low-key compliments.

It might also have something to do with the time she had overheard him shutting down some gossip about her. He cut off the conversation with a harsh glare and an and injection of, “why would I care about this?”

Nor did it hurt that Felix had started showing up to their shift on time, rather than leaving her to do the majority of the opening on her own.

And then, there was their planning for the duet. They sat next to eachother at the table of Mach, with two copies of the same sheet music in front of them. And for once, there was no arguing or concern about proximity, because what mattered was the task they had set themselves.

Byleth was flipping through the sheets that he had scanned for them both, and he had stated unexpectedly that it was his intention that they switch off the flashy primo and grounded secondo parts each.

She registered her surprised by staring at the side of his head until he turned around to scowl back at her, yowling, “What? You have a problem with that?” No, she had expected him to claim all the primo parts as some kind of proof that he was better than her.

But when she told him as much, and all he said was, “No. That would be too much work for me. I can incorporate this into my studies a little, but it can’t be all I do.”

Byleth nodded, “Well we should just begin by focusing on the Barcarolle,” she said. “I’ll take primo, you take secundo.”

“Why?” He asked sharply, knowing very well how suited his lightening-quick fingers were to the high-flying primo part.

“Because you’ll have to set the tempo that way, and if it undulates or becomes expressive, that’s up to you. Isn’t that what you wanted? To work on your weaknesses?”

Felix humphed. “I hope you’re ready for the kind of precision needed for the primo part.” They both knew he was bluffing, having witnessed her exact precision firsthand.

“Don’t count me out yet,” she said, and she thought she could detect a smile at the corner of his lips.

Comparing the two scores, she made notes here and there on her own. Marking out execution notes, as well as the rhythms to expect from Felix’s part during her practice. Felix reached over every now and then, marking down something they had just discussed onto both of their scores.

In the margins of her scores, his handwriting was spiky and inconsistent—so different from his playing. She didn’t know if he realized how much he was coming into her space to mark his notes, but she didn’t yield any ground. However, when it came time for her to make a note on his papers, she slid them over to herself rather than leaning.

“I can’t wait to lay into that scherzo,” he said, writing his rhythm above her secundo part to make it easier for her to practice without him. When he looked up, he found his face close to hers and jerked back, narrowing her eyes her like she was at fault.

Byleth shrugged. “We should start with one piece. Then, as we get used to working together, we can practice more of them.”

She watched him tuck a chunk of soft black hair behind his ear, her eyes tracking the movement before flicking away. “I agree, but once we get this going, I don’t want to hold back.”

“Deal,” she said, her attention moving upward to the door where Sylvain and Claude were entering the coffeehouse. Byleth felt Felix abruptly shift further away from her.

“Hi, Teach,” Claude said, walking to the back and turning on the hot plate for the teapot.

“Hi, Claude, can I get that for you?” Byleth asked, still aware that she was on shift.

“No need.” Claude waved her off. “Hey, Felix.” Felix grunted his greeting. “How are you liking my shift?”

Apparently Felix had forgotten that he had switched times with Claude because he looked confused before saying, “It got Seteth off my back, so that’s something.”

Sylvain came into the main room from where he had poked into the library for a moment. “Has anyone seen a Latin textbook around here. Lysithea said she would leave it for me.”

“It’s on the back counter,” Felix said. “I was going to bring it to you if you didn’t stop by.”

“Thanks Fe,” Sylvain said, sitting down across from Felix. “So what are we up to?”

“Some plotting and scheming?” Claude offered, as he poured the hot water over his prepared tea mug.

“Nah, it’s just music stuff,” Sylvain said casting lazy eyes across the papers on the table, before loosely reclining in the stiff wooden chair and cradling the back of his head in his hands. Both Felix and Byleth, however, quickly scooped up their papers to tuck them away into their individual bags, as if hiding a convert code of communication only the two of them understood. “You two are so stiff,” Sylvain said, stretching broadly, “relax a little.”

Byleth watched as all of Felix’s sharp edges came back up around him, hardening his face into a frown.

“No one’s buying that you can be that carefree, Sylvain,” Claude said coming around to sit in front of Byleth. “So, a few rounds of cards before you have to start closing?” He already had his deck in hand, his hands smoothly cutting and bridging them.

“I’m game,” Byleth said, as Felix’s eyes flicked between her and Claude.

“Of course you are,” Sylvain said cheerily. Byleth watched Felix’s eyes flick then between herself and Sylvain.

She decided that her best strategy was to just look directly at Felix himself, taking in the guarded expression and the rigid set of his bun.

“Okay, I’ll play,” he said sounding resigned.

Byleth managed to win four rounds, Claude two, and Sylvain one. Felix didn’t win a single one. And, as Byleth watched his frown deepen with each round he lost, Byleth was sure that she falling pretty hard for him.

* * *

**15\. disco sheets**

Felix had tracked Byleth from the moment she stepped into the party, and he wasn’t the only one. He watched Sylvain making the same observations perhaps with his own schemes in mind for the evening.

But Byleth came in unruffled and standing her ground. He watched as she greeted Yuri carefully, and looked kindly at Bernadetta, whom Yuri had managed to ‘convince’ (aka picked up and carried) to leave his room where she had barricaded herself.

He watched Byleth turn and talk to Balthus, who was slouching to make it seem like he wasn’t monstrously taller than her and pushing a beer into her empty hand. Was she touching her hair? Was she flirting? He could never tell with her.

She ignored some of the other gossiping graduate students. The gossip was perhaps the biggest annoyance Felix had with his extended group of friends. Their private lives were so on display, from the dewy-eyed cooing of ‘aren’t they so cute’ as soon as any two people hooked up, to detailed accounts of what disasters they were once everything feel to pieces.

It was foolish how short these college flings could be, such a whirlwind, but their afterlife, the gossip, the lingering emotions and social isolation, could last so much longer than the original fling.

As if latching onto a safety net, Byleth turned away from her conversation and found Claude and Sylvain. For some reason Sylvain was always a little more restrained around Claude, and he tended to speak about more serious issues. All the same, Felix had noticed that Byleth wasn’t batting away his flirtations quite as intensely as she used to. Had something happened between the two of them?

Almost as if his churning mind was sending out a distress signal, as he attempted to understand the romantic landscape that he had for so long held at a distance, Annette showed up by his side.

“Felix,” she said, before tipping up a ruby colored cocktail. “Who are you spying on now?”

“No one,” Felix grumped. Annette looked around the room in that obvious way that only she could get away with.

“Have you seen Ashe?” she asked.

“Not since the first couple weeks of school.”

“Yeah, he’s gotten very into his studies—that accelerated Greek class is kicking his butt—but he did say he’d come out to this one.”

“I’ll send him your way if I see him.”

“Thanks, Felix.”

“Hey Annette?” she smiled up at him. “Did you ever get Byleth to agree to play that gig with you?”

“Oh yeah, she did agree. That’s okay with you, right?”

“What’s it matter to me?”

“Oh Felix, I don’t know. It’s just that you’re showing a lot of interest, so I wanted to make sure.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Have you talked to Byleth? How is she? She seems a little off lately.”

“Oh, I think I noticed something too. You know what I think it is— You know she’s never been in a romantic relationship that was about anything more than sex? We were talking about it and—”

“You were talking about it?”

“Just because you don’t care about that stuff doesn’t mean that some of us don’t enjoy talking about relationships and love.”

“Did you talk about being in a relationship with me?”

“Well, I yeah, I guess I did. Nothing specific though. I know you like your privacy. I kept it very impersonal.”

“I bet you did,” Felix muttered skeptically. “And Byleth?”

“Well it’s kind of sad, but I don’t think she really believes that anyone would want to be with her romantically. She just thinks they want her for her body. Yikes! right? It was really sad when she talked about it—she was so matter of fact! It’s no wonder everyone thinks she has the emotional capabilities of a radish, considering the way she talks about stuff like that. And of course everyone’s gossiping about it.”

“Including us.” Felix reminded her, while some part of his mind told him that radishes really were the only good non-meat option at the salad bar.

“Haha, guilty! You’re right Felix. So what’s the deal? Not getting your usual dose of gossip from Dorothea. I know you secretly like the gossip.”

“I do not.”

“So why do you care then?”

“I don’t really, just passing the time. Besides, if I told you anything, Mercedes would know in a matter of seconds and then everyone here would know. I would warn Byleth not to talk to you about personal things, but…”

“But?”

“But it sounded like she really needed to talk,” he spoke from behind his hand, cursing the rye for making him speak so openly.

Annette’s went wide and she shifted them to look at Felix from their corners, as if looking directly at him would startle him to flight. “Your soft side is showing, and it’s disturbing.”

“So is yours.”

“What do you even mean by that?”

“Ashe just walked in. Take him into a corner and have him feed you full of stupid chivalry stories that you can turn into swamp-beasties for your songs.”

“Felix?” But he had already turned and walked into the other room before she could protest.

Felix watched as a crowd of Sylvain, Ferdinand, Hilda, and Dorothea came in from the porch out back. Catching his eye, Dorothea walked over to him. He could see Sylvain watching her, and wondered if he had just become complicit in one of Dorothea’s 80-step plans to make Sylvain jealous. He hoped not. It seemed like they were making headway, judging by the way Felix had woken up to find Dorothea in his and Sylvain’s shared suite two times in the past two weeks.

“Now’s your chance,” she said, cutting the small talk. It was his favorite of her moods when she did this.

“What are you talking about?”

“Byleth’s outside, on her own, and quite drunk, as far as I can tell.”

“What are you implying? That I want to take advantage of her?” Felix spoke grimly, but Dorothea’s eyes were on his mostly empty glass.

“No, Felix, you know very well that I’m implying that you like her. And now’s a good chance to go talk to her. So stop acting like you haven’t been watching her, or that you haven’t been dying to talk to her all night. Down that rye, fill up again, and go outside.”

Felix heard his own footsteps on the wood planks faltering like someone sight-reading a baseline, not sure where to place their fingers next. Nervous habits kept his posture perfectly erect, as Byleth looked over her shoulder toward him.

“Oh, Felix, it’s you,” she said.

“I have something to say,” he said tightly.

“Okay, I’m listening.” Byleth patted the wooden porch beside her as an invitation for him to sit down.

Felix was grateful that the back porch was mostly abandoned, but he opted to stand over her, worried that he’d lose his nerve. “I don’t care who you fucked, and I don’t want your body.”

He meant the words to be reassuring, but he was so twisted in the head—from the rye, and his conversation with Annette, and Dorothea’s insistence—that he couldn’t tell if he was hurting her feelings or saying the right things. It took him aback, therefore, when Byleth laughed, smoke spewing out of her mouth with the first chortle. He hadn’t made her laugh before.

“Good,” she said, “What a stupid reason to be so vulnerable.”

“I—I agree,” Felix said, surprised that they had come to this meeting of the minds so quickly, without any of their normal battling. Maybe this was the rye too. And there was something else, something nice about the laughter—even if it was harsh and sardonic, even if it wasn’t the pure, happy sound like the little bells on the gondolas that she played—he had made her laugh.

He took the moment to sit down beside her on the porch.

“You’re probably well-shot of Yuri, anyway,” Felix said, bluffing as if he knew anything about it. But that’s what people did when they wanted to comfort someone, right?

Byleth snorted. “I knew what I was getting into.” For a flash he saw a tough, rough pride run through her face before dissipating. “The first time we hooked up, he was coming down from a three day high from a synthetic mescaline.”

“Oh,” Felix said.

“I just didn’t know that it wasn’t what I wanted. Or at least that’s how Claude explains it.”

Felix heard the rye talking through his lips. “What do you want, then?” He wanted to stifle it, puke out the rye, but at the same time, curiosity was getting the better of him.

“I don’t really know. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“You and Claude are close.”

“Claude’s my student,” she said shortly. And then, adding as if she couldn’t help herself, while the harsh pride roughened her features again, “I imagine if he hadn’t been though, he would have pursued me obsessively, playing our flirtation like a game of chess.” _Just to have my body…_ The unspoken words rose and fell between them, and Felix felt a surge of annoyance. That wasn’t the line he wanted her draw against Claude. But what did it matter to him anyway?

“Do you think it would have worked out?”

“What?”

“Between you and Claude?” He could feel his teeth clenching, and he took a gulp of rye, hoping to burn himself smooth, as the whiskey sent shudders all the way up into his hairline.

“No,” she breathed out. “He’s much better as a friend.” Her hand itched for a cigarette but stopped itself out of respect for him.

Time to switch angles, Felix thought, or he’d never manage to say what he really needed to say. “So you don’t know what you want,” he began again, and something fell into place for a moment. “I reckon we’re the same with that. Maybe we’re cut from the same cloth, you and I.”

Byleth looked surprised, as she turned to face him for the first time.

“I just mean,” he said, turning his face away from hers and avoiding any opportunity to make contact with her big wide eyes, so dark and soft in the dim porch light, that was—disgustingly—attracting a swarm of bugs. “I swore to myself that I would cut my own path. That I would do what I wanted and not what was expected of me.”

“You want to cut yourself away from your dad,” she said as if it were the clearest thing in the world.

“So you have heard of me,” it was his turn now for the angry pride to enter his voice.

“I looked you up a long time ago.” He watched her eyes narrow, sizing him up again, weighing their reckless levels of drunkeness against each other. “And Sylvain already laid into me about all the responsibilities you guys have lumped on you by your parents.”

“Did he?” Felix said, raising his eyebrows.

“Quite.”

“I wonder why he felt that was necessary.”

“I might have come off as a little judgmental about how he treats women.”

“What an idiot,” but there was a begrudging indulgence in the way he said it. Was that what was between Sylvain and Byleth? Not flirtation but Sylvain lashing out with his usual angst? Felix couldn’t know for sure. “Sylvain doesn’t really get music. He wouldn’t know anything about your skill.”

Byleth shrugged. “And your skill? Does he understand that?”

“No way. To him I’m just the little best friend who grew up with him. But I like it that way.” Why were they talking about Sylvain? Why couldn’t he say the thing he needed to say? Did she want to talk about Sylvain? Was she into Sylvain?

“Listen, Byleth,” he rushed out, thinking he could use a straight shot of whiskey for this, “I’m only going to say this once.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think your playing is amazing, and I mean that, since the first time I heard it—it’s—and you—you’re”, he almost said beautiful, he almost told her that thoughts of her were haunting him. He gulped his rye, hoping it would take him far enough to say what he needed to say.

Byleth, however, never gave him the time to finish. A more sober Byleth would have registered his pause with the significance that it deserved. But, right then, she was gin-tinged, competitive, and burning, not to mention faced with the only person she had managed to show all these feelings to at all.

“Are you kidding?” She laughed at him again, not knowing how cruel it was. “You accosted me to tell me I should practice with a metronome next time.”

“That’s just how I—Ugh, I’m no good at this,” his voice turned brusque.

“You’re fine,” she said throwing the words back at him from the other night.

Quiet expanded between them and with it awkwardness that seemed to permeate the air like a colorless, scentless gas. Before he realized it, Felix had drunk to the bottom of his glass again.

Byleth’s eyes were wide, and she was looking out into the back yard with that harsh pride from earlier. Felix shook his own pride back into his face, and stood to leave.

“Felix,” she said looking back only when he had already taken a few steps away. She heard him pause before she said, “Thanks.”

“What are you thanking me for?” he asked fiercely.

“You did say you liked my playing, and also…” Felix could feel his heart pumping in his chest, distributing a tingling feeling throughout all his vessels, which may or may not have had anything to do with the rye. Maybe she had understood it—the thing he was trying to say. Maybe she had understood how much it meant to him to be around someone so skilled and strong. Maybe this would be to moment that…

But when she continued her thought, she as good as smashed that hope to pieces, “Not caring who I fucked.”

Felix wondered if she could hear his elaborate eye roll, as he turned on his heel and walked back into the too loud, too familiar, too brash, too drunk party.

Somebody’s loose arms tried to wrap around his shoulder, halfheartedly and forcelessly trying to hold onto his chest as he walked to the door. He didn’t even look to see who it was. If someone was going to hold onto him, it would be with force, with strength, determination, dexterity. No easy easy fingers tracing their way up his chest for him.

* * *

**16\. well, I'm sorry that I love you**

The harder Byleth fell, and the more people who started showing up to her Thursday shift, relieved by a post-midterm lull, the harder it was becoming to be around Felix. When it was just the two of them, she found it much easier to abide the loose and reckless way her feelings seemed to leak out of her words and gestures. With other people around, however, concealing herself had become torture.

To begin with, his voice made her want to disappear. It made her want to become small, like a little doll to fit inside the playhouse of his pocket. The instinct was stupid, idiotic, an indulgence she wanted to hate.

And whenever he looked at her, her face felt tight and malleable, like a water skin filling slowly with deep red merlot. Even if she wanted to confess—to betray, she didn’t know that she could. And that was its own problem—that there was no way to communicate her secret mental images about his arms around her, his mouth whispering a kiss on her hip, his smile so precious and small and sharp saying her name.

They were paltry desires, so simple that she could achieve them instantly from someone else, if she wanted to. But some part of her knew that this would render them irredeemably false—that ersatz desire that called her to settle for the casual and the painless. So she let it burn, because burning was better than lies.

But the more that she let the thoughts burn, the more purple and idiotic they became. She would imagine his deft pianists fingers crawling over her body. The though made her blush deep-idiotic-aubergine into her textbook, a chambord, a cheap Zinfandel that made her hate that she was even human after all.

“Earth to Byleth! Hello Professor, what’s going on in that head of yours!” Caspar’s voice boomed in her ears. Evidently someone had been asking her a question. The laughter that followed it from one of the others was even worse, like someone had put a cheese grater on a string and swung it around to see how it whistled.

“Nothing,” Byleth snapped. “Need to go outside,” so aware that with every word, her cracks were showing. She all but leapt over the coffee table trapping her there into the couch. Caspar would be unfazed, she reminded herself. It took a lot to reach him.

“What’s with her?” She heard Caspar’s booming.

“She’s so surly tonight,” Linhardt muttered with an accustomed shrug. And if the other pianist noticed the merlot filling her face, he didn’t say anything, he wouldn’t say anything, because he was just as cold, just as hateful as she was.

She revolved his image in her mind, as she blew out her smoke. His mouth was thin and precise, like something cut by sword-tip. Tonight he had fixed his bun tightly on top of his head, a sculpture cut from ice—but she couldn’t banish the image of how it looked sometimes, in the dim light of the mosh, as soft as feathers.

His eyes weren’t cold, though. They were mobile and thoughtful—the weak spot that always betrayed him. She thought about the way they widened that night that they talked at the party. The night that all their friends were there, laughing and shaking like their dance moves were making the music and not the other way around, and they had decided to talk only to each other. And his eyes were wide when he told her how he thought they were cut from the same cloth.

The Fall nights were growing cooler, and Byleth rubbed her exposed arms more as ritual than comfort. The ground was dewy, fat droplets sat on blades of yellowing grass and the first fallen orange leaves, it was that fucking humid. Byleth sucked in a nicotine breath while dragging in air that tasted like pollen soup.

Lindhardt stepped outside with his little binder. He made a humphing noise, as he settled into one of the folding chairs. “It’s so stuffy in there,” as if the outdoor humidity was any less stuffy. “I was getting so drowsy.”

“Don’t you like sleeping though?” Byleth asked her student, merely to make conversation.

“Sure—in the mornings, in class, a good lazy afternoon on the quad. But right now I think I’m making headway with my research, so it really isn’t a good time.”

There was a disturbance that crunched the slick grass, as Ingrid walked through the yard up to the porch. Ingrid’s cheekbones reflected the fading light, kissed by a flush from her recent exercise. She wore one of her rugby shirts, and there were grass stains on the back from practice. Her stomach growled, “Hi Professor, is Felix in there?”

Byleth tipped upward the corners of her mouth. There was something steadying about Ingrid, something that brought some of her more chipper thoughts back to the surface. “He is,” Byleth said, making sure to avoid Ingrid’s direction when slowly blowing out her smoke.

Ingrid opened the screen door and stuck her head in. Then, perhaps evaluating the atmosphere inside, she merely locked eyes with Felix before pulling her head back, letting the screen shut, and sitting on the porch swing.

Felix came out a moment later, and if it weren’t for his arrogantly straight back, Byleth might have thought he was looking guilty. He sat next to Ingrid on the swing. “Come to lecture me?”

“You stood me up for dinner, you ass!” She knocked Felix’s head gently with her open palm.

“Oh, I’m on shift tonight.” Felix stated the obvious, as if that were any kind of apology.

“Then you shouldn’t have made plans. I thought you were just going to blow off opening like you used to.” Ingrid’s eyes found Byleth who was looking anywhere but at the two of them. “No offense, Professor!” she said, embarrassed.

Byleth shrugged, “None taken. I don’t mind opening alone. There’s a reason I never told Edelgard.”

Felix’s eyes flicked to Byleth and then back to Ingrid. “I forgot what day it was. Anyways, I was just meeting you at the dining hall. That hardly counts as plans.”

“It’s still a plan—I was waiting for you.”

Felix puffed in and out breath, a trained exercise. “So you need dinner, we’ll go get some. Byleth will cover for me, she has more authority than anyone around here anyway. And she’s stuck pining for Yuri or Sylvain or one of her other boys—“

Ingrid sighed, “No need, I brought a to-go box from the dining hall with me.” She pulled the box out of her bag, and began wolfing it down.

“I am not!” Byleth snapped, the words finally breaking through her own thoughts.

“Not what?” Felix asked harshly. She didn’t look to see if his eyes were narrowed or wide.

“‘Pining’ for anyone,” she tried to throw all the derision she could into the words and managed a moderate success.

“If not that, then what is it? Usually when we have shift together you’re making power-points, instigating a game of cards, or joking at your students’ expense.” Byleth looked apologetically at Lindhardt, the only one of her students present. Lindhardt, however, just waved sleepily as if to say, he’d mock the students too. “Today you’ve been all shut up and mopey.”

“And what does any of that have to do with Sylvain?” She omitted Yuri altogether.

“I saw the way you looked over at us on the quad earlier today.”

“Because you’re my friends.”

Felix made a noncommital _tch_.

“Felix,” Ingrid said, pulling away from her noodles. “I highly doubt the Professor was looking at Sylvain for the reason you’re thinking. Sylvain admitted to me that he had said something unkind to her a few weeks back. He feels really bad about it, Professor,” Ingrid said looking at her now.

Byleth shrugged. She hadn’t really let Sylvain get to her, although it might be necessary to talk about it sometime. “Something like that,” Byleth said, now ignoring the way Felix’s eyes narrowed. “Anyway, I’m going to go get started on dishes and cleanup, maybe we can get out of here right at 10. Do me a favor and count the drawer, will you?”

She already had the screen door open when she heard him say, “In a minute, it’s hours before close.”

The other students lingered until closing, joking and carefree. Byleth kept away from Felix, busying herself with chores and working on her research in the reading room.

When finally it was just the two of them and their closing chores were finished, they stood outside of the door they had just locked. Felix was looking at the dark and shuttered coffeehouse when he said, “I’m ready to start combining our parts. Are you?”

Byleth’s face burned in the humid dark. They had been practicing their duet parts separately for weeks. Sending comments by text message every so often when they heard each other playing.

“Yes,” she said heavily, now finally feeling confirmation that they would go through with this. “We’ll start slow, of course, but I’ve gotten all the notes under my fingers, at least.” She spoke humbly, but she knew with the level she had gotten to with the piece, she could very well wipe the floor with him.

“I’ve also been practicing the primo part for the Scherzo. Have you looked at it yet?” She could see the competitive gleam in his eyes and the smirk forming on his face despite the low light.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” They turned away from the door and began walking down the lawn about to go their separate ways. “We’ll start with the Barcarolle.”

“I know that,” he said looking somewhat deflated.

They stood feet from each other, their paths about to diverge, and Byleth felt the need to repair him, to inspire. “I bet—” she said before cutting herself off.

“What?” asked Felix, eyes narrowed.

“I bet you play a mean Scherzo, though. I look forward to it.”

“There’s no need to butter me up,” he said smugly. His words were harsh but he was giving her a thin smile.

Byleth nodded, and turned to walk on her way, muttering the words “Good night,” under her breath.

* * *

**17\. it's a phase I'm going through**

They had decided on a Monday night. The time felt calming and casual, since neither of them would have to miss other engagements in lieu of their little arrangement.

Felix was already playing when she arrived. It was his Chopin Nocturne again, the one that she knew must stretch his hands to their capacity, the one that it must have been a real push for him to learn. She knocked on the door at 7:00 precisely, and Felix finished a run of triplets before stopping. Through the door, she heard the bench groan as he stood and to open the door.

“Good evening,” she said, trying to sound cheery, despite the skeptical way he was now sizing her up, as if seeing her for the first time as some kind of combatant. “I heard you warming up already.”

“I was,” he said opening the door wider to let her in. Someone had pulled a metal folding chair into the room, and Felix sat down in it. “You can go ahead and warm up for a bit. Then we’ll practice.”

“Okay,” Byleth said. He looked tired, with light bags under his eyes and his hair all but flying away from the hold of his bun, wearing soft grey chinos and an untucked light blue button down. When she sat down, he pulled out some homework and propped it onto his knee, taking the time to study. There was something so companionable about it.

She decided to warm up with simple scales, considering she had played the piece extensively the night before and was feeling very comfortable with it. There was something easy about playing with Felix there, and Byleth was pleased to feel her scales roll off easily, as if she were in the room alone.

When she finished up, she scooted over to the treble end of the piano.

“Are you ready?” She asked Felix, keeping her voice soft and free of nerves.

Felix looked up, and then his eyes closed sleepily as he stifled a yawn behind his hand.

“Or, do you need to rest?” She wasn’t trying to mother him, but there was no reason for them to have to continue that night if he was too tired.

“No,” he said a little sharply. Felix tucked his schoolwork into his bag, and slid in on the bench next to her, his fingers in his lap, ready for the lower register.

As Byleth’s eyes drifted across the seams of his pants so close to her own, she realized for the first time what dueting with someone would mean. It wasn’t just playing in tandem. It was playing, together on the same bench—hands crossing over each others, fingers nearing each others. Some duet couples move together with real chemistry, swaying to a beat they both share. The idea of it made her stomach turn.

She continued to sit stiff at the very end of the bench. This could work, she tried to tell herself—A lot of her notes were high in the treble register, so she could manage the piece from all the way up there, right?

“You can move closer,” Felix growled, his averted eyes were practically pleading to her to not make this weird.

Byleth banished all emotion from her face, as she scooted down the stool.

Felix was opening the folder that he had bound the sheet music into. On one side was his score, on the other was hers.

“Count us off when you’re ready,” she said. The majority of the introduction was up to him.

Felix’s counting and rhythm were perfect, clean, and predictable. Considering what he usually played, the technicality of this part was hardly a challenge. However, the real difficulty would be putting the parts together. Ideally, they would give the rhythm a little more ebb and flow in the long run, leaning into its intriguing gaps.

Byleth had no problem counting out the spaces for her sporadic notes and entrances. She was still simply adding a few notes into his according to her part, when it came time to turn the page. Since Felix was busier right then, she raised her hand to turn it. However, his hand was quickly there, annoyed and slapping hers away.

“Secondo turns the page,” he snapped.

“But if it would help you at this point.”

“There’s a reason for the method.” It made her want to slap him back.

Byleth bit her tongue on a snarky response and they continued. However once they started play together in earnest, counterpointing each others’ rhythm, things began to fall apart.

“You’re not counting,” Felix growled.

“You’re counting too much, these notes are supposed to be exaggerated.”

Felix raised his hands from the keys. His expression was fighting a battle between disdainful and downright pissed off. “Do we need to get out the metronome?”

“No, we need to learn to fit the two parts together. I practiced with a little lilting rhythm.”

“I heard you practicing. I assumed that once we were playing it together, you would start to do it right.”

“I think it sounds better with a little lilt to it.”

“And yet, I’m the one setting the rhythm, aren’t I?” he couldn’t keep his voice from edging on anger. If she wanted to set the rhythm, she shouldn’t have claimed the Primo part.

“Aren’t you supposed to be learning to be more flexible?”

“And sacrifice accuracy?” He was seething now, and Byleth was acutely aware of how close his face was to hers. She thought he might headbutt her in exasperation.

“Sometimes overall effect is more important than accuracy. But if you’re too tired, we could stop—”

“No,” he hissed. “We’ll go again.”

“Okay,” Byleth said quietly, resolving to follow his rhythm this time, no matter what. “Go ahead and count us off.”

Felix breathed hard through his nose evening himself out. He counted them in and began.

The piece began smoothly, Byleth adding in her notes right where they were intended to be. She was careful about her counting, keeping everything clean.

Then, when it came time for their rhythms to ring into each other’s silences, mayhem began. Byleth had had every intention of following Felix’s rhythm perfectly. Except that, she couldn’t help herself from leaning into the delicate rhythm, feeling its waves like the dark waters of a beach at night.

Felix, in an effort to take back control of the rhythm began playing louder and harder. Both hands pounding out his metrical obssession, as if purposefully intending to drown out Byleth’s notes with the much louder capacity of the bass.

Byleth recoiled, angry now. To make matters worse, her abrupt shift slammed her knee into Felix’s thigh. They both surged away from the unwelcome touch.

“This isn’t a battle—we’re not competing. We’re supposed to be listening to each other, not fighting.” Byleth had never known herself to talk to someone else this way, with this anger, this burning; that need for him to hear and acquiesce to her pounded in each syllable.

“How am I supposed to intuit how to play, when it’s based solely on your personal whim?” She wanted to punch the smugness out of his voice. She wanted to bite down on his frustrating, sharp tongue. She wanted to kiss him wordless and malleable. And she wanted him to listen to her, to sway with her, to let this be easy, to let their rhythms merge.

“You listen and adjust.” She was trying her best to keep her voice calm.

“Ridiculous! Why don’t you just count better?”

“Because that’s not what this piece is about.” How could she communicate how she wanted to hear the two of them together, how their rhythm was what would make this piece special. “Why are you just trying to beat me? This isn’t something you can win alone, you know.”

“Ugh, forget it.” He was lithe and lightning-quick, as he slipped the folder into his bag with a practiced motion and stepped out of the room. The barely soundproofed door shut behind him before Byleth could get out a ‘Felix!’ or a ‘Wait!’. If she had even intended to, that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it were anyone else, Byleth would have just grabbed his face already. Instead, she's always worried that he's going to headbutt her. That's the charm of it, I guess.
> 
> Take care and thanks for reading!


	4. Valse: The Fire Out from the Wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- Childish avoidance and new friends  
> \- Rodrigue's request  
> \- Moshpit fistfight and a bad headache aftermath  
> \- This whole duet thing working out  
> \- A cute singer-songwriter gig  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to keep up with the music, I made a [spotify playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57EBQl19oaRDIEXm4LwPCJ?si=-37XS5CVShalMfhppP98mw).

**18\. baroque social**

Byleth’s first attempt at a duet had with Felix had gone poorly. She didn’t know what was worse—that they had yelled at each other, that Felix had sprinted from the room, or that she _still_ wanted to kiss him?

That was neither here nor there, though, because Byleth had firmly decided to give the Rachmaninoff a rest. And that included the dueting thing, as well as the whole being-around-Felix situation. As far as she was concerned, It could all use a rest.

She purposefully chose times in the practice room when Felix wouldn’t be there. And she always picked the room furthest from his favorite piano, despite it putting her on a wiggly bench every time.

Byleth didn’t attend the open concert that week, either. Instead, she took the opportunity to slip down to the practice rooms. Finding the rooms blissfully empty, she let her playing lapse into an old favorite, Liszt’s _Mephisto Waltz_. It was another piece about a demon, but at least Mephistopheles was a demon with a sense of humor.

Her fingers moved quickly, tremoring through the turbulent piece. It strained her reach in the glorious way that would leave a nice little ache in her left arm. She gave herself some time, shaking out her left hand, before moving on to one of Lizst’s Nocturne _Leibestraume_.

When it came time to end the piece, however, she didn’t lift her fingers from the keys. Instead, she mutated the scales by their relatives until she had effectively given herself a key change. From there her playing morphed into something else entirely. Byleth had always played with her feelings and her pent up emotions, the things she just couldn’t share with others. But before that night, it had always been someone else’s music.

For the first time, her emotions strayed off the written path, and she was playing something new. Her own rhythms began speaking to who she was and what she wanted. She was improvising, close to composing even, and nothing had felt that good before. The keys were her home. The themes were her stories, telling her secrets and desires.

This was it, she thought, this was one of the things she wanted.

Byleth didn’t go back to the practice rooms after that. It wasn’t avoidance—she was just so busy. The keyboard in her apartment, even with its barely weighted keys and electric speakers, served well enough for newfound composing.

Thus, she filled her days by playing music, talking with students, or cramming dull sources in her head to regurgitate for her own term papers. She asked friends to cover her shift at Mach Coffeehouse, pleading herself too busy. Hubert was willing to take care of it the first week. Of course, he claimed that he only did it to help Edelgard properly run the coffeehouse. The second week, Claude agreed to go in her place.

Still, despite the lengths she was taking to avoid the other pianist, there were times when, sitting with her phone out, she considered sending Felix a message to see if he was willing to give their duet another try.

More than that, she wanted to tell him that she was writing her own music. Though it was just a small Prelude, Felix’s opinion of it was the only one she wanted. She even went so far as to record an audio clip of it on her phone. She had it embedded in a message addressed to him, before she suddenly erased the draft and deleted the recording. She was too busy to deal with a grumpy dueting partner.

* * *

**19\. the bleeding heart show**

Seteth’s emails were among the few that Byleth responded to within the hour of receipt. Which meant that, when he asked her for a brief meeting in his office, she was prompt, wearing a small smile and teacher-appropriate clothes. Seteth was looking customarily preoccupied, albeit relieved to see Byleth.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,” he said, welcoming her into his office. As she passed through his door, she wondered whether he knew how often she stood outside that door listening in on his cello practice.

“Of course,” she said with real fondness. Despite his strict standards, Seteth was kind and competent.

“Let’s sit. Would you like tea?”

Byleth took the seat, saying “Thanks, but I’ve already had too much today.”

Seteth smiled wearily. “I want to talk to you about the university’s Spring concert lineup.” Byleth tilted her head curiously. She had attended a few of the university concerts. They were mostly visiting musicians and performers, as well as the university’s own award-winning Silver Snow Quartet. In addition to Seteth on the cello, the quartet consisted of Rhea, who was Byleth’s thesis adviser, the vocal teacher Manuela on the violin, and Professor Hanneman, the instructor of record for Byleth’s class, on the viola.

“We have an exciting lineup from the spring season,” Seteth went on. “The Silver Snow Quartet will play twice, Manuela has expressed interest in putting together an opera performance for the end of the season, considering we have so much vocal talent among the students this year, and we have already scheduled a special guest performance, featuring Rodrigue Fraldarius.”

Byleth felt her brows shoot up and her eyes grow wide. Felix’s dad would be performing. That was enough to put the University on the map and draw in donors.

“You look excited,” Seteth said, pleased by Byleth’s surprised expression. “Now, if only I can get his son, Felix Fraldarius, to agree to play a duet with him during the concert.”

“Have you asked Felix?”

“Both Rodrigue and I have brought it up in the past few days. He has turned us both down, even after we assured him that his father was perfectly willing to play a Baroque sonata.”

“Vivaldi?” Byleth asked, looking skeptical.

“Most likely,” Seteth sighed into his hand.

“I can’t imagine Felix playing the harpsichord on stage.”

“It would be a deal-breaker if we forced him in that direction.” Byleth felt the corner of her mouth twitch in amusement. “It was hard enough getting him to practice for his organ juries last year.” She had never thought about it, but as a Bach specialist, it only made sense that Felix could play the organ.

“Felix is stubborn,” Byleth said, her understatement downplayed by her now blank face.

“He really is. He claims he’s strictly a soloist, and he won’t duet. There also seems to be some barrier between him and his father.” The lines between Seteth’s eyebrows spoke to the headache that Felix was causing him. “The show will go on without him. And I still have an opportunity to convince him during his upcoming juries.”

Byleth felt a pang of sympathy at the mention of Felix’s juries. Could that stress be the reason he had been tightly wound and exhausted the last time she had seen him?

“Anyway, Byleth, I’m sorry to vent my frustrations to you.”

“I don’t mind, Seteth,” Byleth lied, feeling distinctly uncomfortable discussing the same surly pianist she was currently avoiding.

“I appreciate that. The truth is, I have a favor to ask. In the case that Felix does not not come around to playing the duet, would you be willing to play it in his stead? Rodrigue has asked that I find a suitable replacement, should Felix prove to be uncooperative.”

Byleth frowned. “I’m flattered,” she said, “but I’m not a performer. I’m a researcher.”

“And yet, every time you do perform, you hold your audience enchanted.”

“I appreciate that, but I like to keep it small—friends and such. Not to mention my fingers weren’t really made for the Baroque style. Wouldn’t you be better off asking one of the piano faculty? I have heard the the Regent Professor Rhea is a virtuosic pianist in addition to her violin work.”

“I have asked Rhea and she has assured me that she has her hands full. She was actually the one who recommended that I ask you. I think you could make it work with the piece." Seteth looked at her kindly, but there was still panic in his face, "whatever fingers you have. And you’re a much more reliable option than Felix. Please think it over—you have time to decide.”

“I appreciate that. And thank you for thinking of me.”

Byleth stood, feeling stretched thin. Just that afternoon she had plans to rehearse with Annette for her gig. The pop song didn't worry her. More menacing was the question of how Felix would feel if she replaced him in a performance with his own dad.

Byleth had Annette come to her apartment to practice. It made perfect sense, considering Byleth would be playing on an electric piano for the gig as well. Annette was a pleasant house guest—she brought cookies.

When she handed Byleth the piano part, the pianist found herself gratified to see that it was much more robust than she was expecting. Most pop musicians, her dad included, tended to just hand over a sheet of chord progressions, expecting her to translate and elaborate it herself. This however had thought out themes and even a simple run or two.

“This looks great, Annette,” Byleth said, pumping her fist to show her enthusiasm.

“I’m so excited to hear you try it out,” Annette said, bouncing as she unpacked her guitar.

Two different handwriting samples speckled the simple score. The majority of the notes were Annette’s. She had marked down verse entrances in rounded looping print. The other was a handwriting that Byleth thought she recognized from somewhere, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe she had seen it in the margins of a student paper?

Playing with Annette was relaxed and fun. The quirky songwriter expressed confidence that they would do better each time they played. That kind of optimism was foreign to the classical musician. Within a few play-throughs, Byleth adapted to the score, and when Annette started humming during the bridge, Byleth took the opportunity to lilt the rhythms for all they were worth.

“Thank you so much,” Annette said, when they finished playing. “This is coming together just the way I want it to.” This would be, Byleth thought, Annette’s best song, not to mention the only that had a chance of singling.

“So what’s next for your music?” Byleth asked, making a little conversation.

“Well, I’ve thought about bringing a drummer on board and putting together a full band. But right now, I don’t know. I’m still really busy with school work. Say, Are you going to the Mach show tonight, Professor?” Annette asked, packed guitar in hand, as she made her way to the door.

“Please, you can call me Byleth. Do you think it will be good?” Byleth asked only half-interested. She had already decided not to go, relishing more of her own social isolation.

“Really good,” Annette said enthusiastically. “Edelgard has been all about putting up posters everywhere. She swears this group will get everyone dancing. Not even you would want to stay on the porch.”

Byleth smiled, “Now that is tempting. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“I hope you do decide to come,” Annette said looking at Byleth with her big eyes and her big smile. Then, to Byleth’s surprise the younger girl gripped her hand warmly in both her own, before letting going and bouncing down the walk.

Byleth sighed as she closed the door. Now she had to make an appearance.

* * *

**20\. love is like a bottle of gin**

The show was even rowdier than Byleth had expected. She had dressed up for the first time in weeks, wearing a pleather skirt, with a soft gray blouse tucked in, and some of her favorite patterned tights. The smell of smoke and malt liquor were clinging to every space she passed through, as her heeled boots thudded dully on the worn wood floors.

The band’s sound was noisy, crunchy—and also cheery? The feedback was unbearable in the best way—skull melting and not even satanic. Every time the beat felt like it was going to stay on a roll, there was another unearthly squealing or static crunch. And that was, exactly, the best thing.

Byleth could feel her shoulders moving, her hips swaying. The band wasn’t even as loud as it would get, and already there were people making the most exaggerated movements. They were banging their heads and throwing their bodies around.

By the time the noise was reaching a fervent peak, white hair flashed around the whirling dervish of Edelgard, and Caspar bounced against her nearly to acrobatics. Byleth looked up toward the door to see Lindhardt peeking his head in, stuffing his fingers in his ears and retreating onto the porch. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the ever-flirtatious Sylvain trying to lure a rocking-hard Dorothea out onto the porch.

Tough-as-nails Ingrid looked over everyone with a combination of disgusted curiosity and over-protective concern. Hubert stood further along the same wall, staring sullenly into one of the other rooms, where Claude was doubtlessly winning Ferdinand’s shirt off his back in a game of cards.

Near the front of the stage, gracefully flailing in a mock-battle, dance-spar with a bemused Dimitri, was Felix. His raven hair had all but come down out of his messy bun. He swayed his head with the beat, not even caring, for once, that he was about an eighth-note behind it, and his feet were moving erratically.

The band took a break, leaving the crowd with a quiet electronic drone, while they wiped their sweat and cleared their throats. Byleth watched as Felix yanked and re-tied his hair into an even more messy bun. Dimitri made sure he was okay before heading into the reading room, where the ongoing card game was suddenly the loudest noise in the coffeehouse.

Perhaps he felt her looking at him. Or, maybe he was getting antsy long break. Whatever the case, he caught sight of Byleth in his customary surveying glare, and made his way toward her.

“You!” He said loudly. She heard him clearly over the hubbub of the other students greeting each other, as if everyone was waking from a collective dream of noise, to realize they weren’t alone in their thrashing.

“Hi Felix,” Byleth responded, prickly from being addressed like that.

“You haven’t been practicing. You’re going to get rusty.” He wiped at his brow where strands of his hair were sticking to his forehead.

“I’ve been busy,” she said, knowing it was a cheap excuse.

“I don’t believe you.” His eyes were narrowed nearly to slits, but it didn’t stop him from looking her up and down. Sizing her up or checking her out? Felix himself probably didn’t even know the difference at this point. “You’re just going to let me win like that?”

“You think you’re winning? You’re the one who stormed out of the practice room.” Byleth realized her angry cracks were showing, and she didn’t even care. If you couldn’t say it at a noise-pop concert, then where could you say it?

“Maybe. But I’m also the one who’s still working on it. And you’re too much of a coward to face me. You don’t practice! You don’t show up to our shift!” He ticked each offense off on a long, slender finger. “Everyone thinks you hate me!” He gripped his fingers into a fist, as if suddenly unsure now what to do with his hands.

“And what do you think?” Byleth asked, keeping her arms crossed defensively in front of her body.

“Doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I wanted to learn from your skills, but you’re too much of a coward to do that.”

“I'm not a coward!” Byleth shouted, throwing her hands down by her sides.

“Face it, Byleth, you are! You sneak Annette to your apartment to practice. You send Claude to pick up your shifts so you won’t see me. You let Yuri blame your falling out on you being a cold bitch.” Byleth’s hands were unintentionally balling into fists. The music was starting up again, a loud, harsh, abrasive mercy. “You’re not cold—just a coward. You can’t admit that you have emotions except to the keys of a piano.”

“Look who’s talking!” Byleth shouted into the music.

It was all built up inside of them. The fury of the music. The residual emotional intensity from their stilted practice session weeks before. All the spoken and unspoken thoughts that rose and fell between them.

They would never know what exactly had been the last straw. Nor would they admit who threw the first punch, since both sets of hands were balled into fists. And retrospectively, both of them would claim their dodges to be the most spectacular.

Felix’s first punch came from the left, whipping very close to Byleth’s shoulder. She pivoted just in time. Then she went low to dodge his second strike, barely remaining balanced. She thrust up at him with her right fist, but he nimbly jumped around out of her reach.

His next punch grazed her cheek. Angry, she shouldered into his chest, knocking him off balance. Then, as he staggered, Byleth managed to smash her loose fist upside his head, and Felix went down.

“Oh Goddess,” Byleth gasped crouching down, despite her skirt, to where Felix slumped.

He recovered quickly into a crouch as well. He held his head as the music and the dancing continued to crash around them.

“Professor! What the hell?” Ingrid yelled, having already rushed most of the way to them. She threw Felix’s arm around her shoulder. “He needs fresh air. Can you help me get him out of here, or are you going to punch him again?”

“No—I—I’m so—” There were so many furious thoughts and feelings rushing through her mind, that Byleth didn’t know which word should go next. Her hand was on Felix’s side, bracing him as she pulled his other arm around her shoulder.

“Save it Professor, I know you guys have been driving each other crazy lately.” The further they managed to make their way from the band, the better Byleth could hear Ingrid’s scolding. “He was totally trying to knock you out anyway. Though, I’m shocked you took the bait.” Shame boiled in Byleth’s stomach.

“I can walk myself, dammit,” Felix cut in, shaking his head.

“Don’t move your head too much—you’re going to make that headache worse,” Ingrid snapped. The front entrance was blocked, packed, and full of people, so they made their way to the back. They were able to cut through easily, once the concert-goers on the outskirts made out Felix’s angry face.

Ingrid settled Felix down on the steps of the back porch. She made no comment when Byleth dropped down beside him.

“You punched me!” Felix said, looking at Byleth as if he couldn’t believe that she was real. He sounded more shocked than angry.

“Ingrid,” Byleth turned to look at the other girl who was flicking lint off her tartan skirt. “Do you mind going to get him some aspirin?”

“Sure Professor,” Ingrid said, grateful to have a task.

Once Ingrid had left, Byleth turned back to Felix, restraining the urge to tuck his straying hair behind his ear. “I’m sorry I punched you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he snapped. “I was going to punch you—we’re the same. I’m just surprised, after all that shit you gave me about preserving my hands.”

“You really should, you know.” Byleth examined her knuckles, grateful that she remembered what Jeralt had taught her about keeping her fist loose.

“Shouldn’t you?” Felix was also looking at her hand.

“It doesn’t matter for me because I’m not a performer. I’m a researcher.” Her mind flashed back to sitting in Seteth’s office. This was the second time that week she said that. “You, though—”

“That’s idiotic. You have as much reason to preserve your ability to perform as I do. Just because you didn’t bank your career on it.” Byleth just scowled at him. He scowled at her.

“How’s your hand?” he asked.

“How’s your head?” she shot back, not wanting to admit how sore her hand was.

“It fucking hurts.”

“Me too.”

A phone ringtone came from Felix’s pocket. It clashed monstrously with the noise coming out of the coffehouse. Felix’s mouth twisted in disgust, not even bothering to reach for it.

“Do you need to get that?”

“No,” he said rubbing the phone in his pocket as if willing it to go away. “It’s just my dad and I don’t want to talk to him.”

“He wants you to play a duet with him?”

“How in the hell do you know that?” Then, before she could explain Seteth’s request he said, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to play a duet with him—I’m not like that.”

“Are you sure?” Byleth tried to sound nonchalant. She didn't want him to know just how much she wanted him to agree to the duet with his dad, so she wouldn’t have to.

However, in Felix’s mind, that part of the conversation was over. He was looking at her hand again, which was still stung red. His own hand jerked hers, and then it went still. “Will you be able to play?” he asked.

“Play?” Byleth said, still thinking about Rodrigue’s request.

“Our duet. You’ve been avoiding me for so fucking long. I’ve already learned the fingering for the Scherzo.”

Byleth couldn’t help but smile at his one-track mind. “Are you going to walk out again?”

“I’m sorry I did that, okay?” He let his head fall into his palm, and then winced. “I can be…inflexible.”

“Stiff as a board more like it,” Byleth said, looking around for Ingrid with the aspirin.

Felix grunted.

Ingrid came back with her water bottle and a few pills for Felix to take. “Sorry it took so long,” Ingrid said, handing them over. “These came from Mercedes, so you’re for sure not getting dosed.”

“Thanks,” Felix grunted, drinking greedily from the water bottle.

“We’re going to talk here more, if that’s okay.” Byleth said to Ingrid.

“Sure Professor, just make sure he takes care of himself. And don’t beat him up anymore, okay?” Ingrid walked back into the coffeehouse, the loud music amplifying as the door swung open. Now, removed from the source of the sound and unable to feel the vibrations, it just sounded like a bunch of loud loud noise.

“Even though I walked out, you shouldn’t have avoided me for so long.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” Byleth said, and it felt like she was sinking her head upside down into a cold pool. “I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at you.”

“I’m surprised you got so mad, actually. You usually handle me better than that.”

“I was vulnerable, I guess.” Felix snapped his eyes to her in surprise and then immediately directed them away. “So, are you going to tell me about it?” Byleth said, looking at the pocket of his black jeans where his phone rang a few minutes before.

“Tell you about what?” Felix’s eyes were suspicious, but he was too tired to sound mean.

“Whatever your damage is.”

“Maybe sometime,” he deflected. That was fair—he looked exhausted, and a bruise was forming on his temple that he would have to disguise with some artful hair styling tomorrow. “Look, I’m serious about our duet. If you try again with me, I’ll… I promise I won’t walk out like that again. Once your hand heals—was that your right hand?”

“Mmm yeah, that’s the one,” Byleth said. She shook out the hand the same way she would after playing the tremoring octaves of _Pathetique_ for too long, then she regretted it. This wasn’t the same kind of pain at all.

“Dammit, you idiot.” It might have been the warmest thing Felix had ever said to her.

“As if you were only trying to hit me with your left hand?” She quipped back, hearing the smile in her own voice.

He scoffed. “I was trying to hit you with everything I had.”

She laughed, the sound low and pure. “Is that some kind of compliment?”

“Take it however you want.”

“Are you really that upset that I haven’t been coming to our shift?” She asked, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the vulnerability surrounding it.

“Hubert’s creepy, and Claude’s always looking at me like I’m a manuscript he wants to study. I like working with you—I thought I made that clear.”

“Felix,” Byleth didn’t know which of them was more surprised when she wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders. His clothes were slightly sticky from the collective sweat of the concert. Hers probably were too, but she didn’t care.

“What are you doing!” he panicked, as she wrapped the other arm around his front and drew him into a seated hug. She stayed that way, tucking his bruised head against her neck. It was almost as surprising that he was letting her as it was that she hugging him.

“Um, okay,” he said then, giving one of his arms to hug her back. She could feel his face burning up, the heat radiating outward from where she had punched him. She resisted the urge to make things weird by snuggling into his warmth.

She gave it a moment, both of them too afraid to talk, before she pulled back. As she brought both of her arms into her own space, she felt suddenly chilly in the night air.

The seasons were turning. The humidity would no longer keep the lawns warm at night. Soon it would turn on them, piercing even through their woolen protections with its icy cold.

Felix and Byleth were now sitting close enough that their legs were touching. Without warning, Felix leaned his head over and rested it on her shoulder. “I have such a headache,” he groaned, but Byleth felt some of the warmth rush back to her.

“Let me walk you home?” she asked.

“Ugh, sure.” She would wait, though, until he was ready to raise his head, before helping him up.

* * *

**21\. but a bottle of gin is not like love**

“I think I’ve figured something out,” Byleth said as she slid into the stool next to him. Felix liked when she skipped the small talk and niceties. Their thighs were a few inches apart, and now that she was relaxed, her knees fell outward on the stool, almost brushing his own.

“What’s that?” Felix asked. He kept his eyes on the pages of the music, as if they concealed some unknown rhythm, some secret to unlocking the potential of this duet.

“It’s a Barcarolle, a boat song,” Byleth said flatly.

“I know.” That was part of why he had chosen it—had she not caught on? “So?”

“So, both of our rhythms are right. We just haven’t been using them the right way.”

“I’m listening,” he said looking at her now. Byleth, flushed and her eyes softened, as if _I’m listening_ was the sexiest come on he could have said. What a strange girl. To put a little distance between them, he qualified the statement, “You play these more often—with your Mendelssohn.”

“Right, well, I think you’re right to keep our measures absolutely steady the way you—” he could tell that she had stopped herself from saying something more invective and instead went with “—have been.” Felix nodded, and the left corner of this mouth rose a margin into a smile. “But we need to fluctuate within the measure, with the little waves I’m trying to make. I mean, if you think about it—common time is a strange signature for a piece like this.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Felix said. “It should be 6/8.”

“It’s almost like these triplets are forcing us to bend the phrasing. Think of it like being on a boat, right? The oar going into the water pushes the boat with a swell, and then it tapers off as the boat drags across. Then with the next measure, we hit the next swell. So internally we need that wave to roll.”

Felix nodded. He restrained his eyes from rolling at the poetic language.

“But we need our waves to roll at different times while the pace stays steady. So we can’t just listen to each other and copy. We have to each feel both rhythms.”

“And when you go into your sixteenth notes?” Felix pressed, not arguing with her assessment.

“I’ll be skimming the water, and you keep us grounded in the waves. I need you to keep me steady, just don’t leave me behind, okay?”

Felix nodded again. Some unbidden part of the back of his mind supplied, _as if I could leave you behind_ , but he brushed it away.

“Ready?” he asked, fingers already trained on the keys. Byleth nodded, and he counted them off. Felix played just as stiffly and stiltedly as he might normally play a piece that was so ill-suited to his particular style.

That is, until Byleth came in, her fingers lilting the higher phrasing, turning it into a portrait of waves and the inconsistent bustle of a sea-town. This time, Felix followed her, swooping with her swells and grounding her into a standard time, pressing her to register each new measure and the precise beginning and ending of each phrase.

As the sixteenth notes picked up, Byleth flew into the higher registers. She brushed into his shoulder, letting herself sway little by little into their rhythm. And when the piece ended, despite Byleth doing most of the work toward the end, he felt her giddiness. He felt the emotions she has pushed forth against his sustained whole notes. He could tell it was something beautiful.

His fingers seemed to have a mind of their own. Dropping the sustained note at the end, they began brushing and grasping against the skin of Byleth’s arms, soft and exposed by the cutoff shoulder of the black band shirt she was wearing. It was an excitement that for once he wasn’t containing. Byleth smiled back at him indulgently, but her eyes were averted as if trying to communicate his own constant refrain of _don’t make this weird_. He stopped touching her arm, but he could feel himself grinning.

“It’s good,” he said, the tone of his words altered and rearranged by his smile. “Not good enough yet, but it could be great.”

“We’ll have to keep working on it—”

“And the Scherzo,” Felix said quickly, eager to take one of the melodies into his own hands and bend it into his own style.

“Yes,” Byleth said giddy again, “We can do it all—the waltz.”

“And the Romance,” Felix barely breathed, his cheeks flushing.

“And the Russian Theme and the Glory, you’d sound great on those,” their eyes had locked. For a blessed second Byleth was leaning up against him.

And if feeling wasn’t first, if he wasn’t too ate up with sensations to think about her warmth leaning up against him—he would have slipped his arm around her waist and drawn her close until her green lamp eyes were looking up at him, until he could close their distance with a kiss.

But he was too slow, his arm hadn’t moved or reached out, and she pulled away. She scooted just a few inches up the bench, enough for a dozen unspoken statements to fly between them. Felix, for his part merely shuttered his smiles and raised his eyebrows.

“But first we have to keep practicing this. It’s good, not great.” She said, bringing them back to business.

“Agreed,” he said. “Should we practice Saturday then? Evening, before Dimitri’s party?”

“No, it’ll have to be morning if it’s Saturday. I’m playing a small gig with Annette in the evening.”

“Right,” Felix said tightly.

“You should come to the gig if you’re free.”

“Perhaps.” He paused, frustrated by his own reluctance. “We’ll do Saturday morning then.”

“Okay, see you then,” Byleth said, already feeling a little breeze of cold as Felix quickly stood to pack away his things.

* * *

**22\. and I could take another hit for you**

Saturday was not, however, the next time Byleth would see Felix. They had both forgotten, or perhaps simply neglected mention, their shared shift at Mach Coffeehouse. 

After brewing the coffee that Thursday, Byleth did not stay out on the porch all evening as she normally would. Instead, she sat at the small table, typing out slides and a rough lesson plan for the next week.

She was partly listening to the music she had put on over the speaker and partly listening to Hilda teach Raphael about how to make a charm bracelet for his sister. She sat across the table from Felix. Whenever either of them happened to overhear a particularly absurd statement from one of their peers, the two met their eyes over the laptop screens.

Felix was refraining from his usual sardonic comments, normally spouted off every time he heard something too stupid. Instead, he chose to smirk them out to Byleth alone. And she relished the confidential intimacy of it.

Despite the rumors and talk of their fight at the concert, no one bat an eye about them working together like this. If anything, it was expected that people who had a shift together tended to grow close throughout the year. And, sometimes closeness was a punch upside the head.

The night was young when Claude waltzed in. He shot a paper airplane cheekily a Hilda who grabbed for it and opened it immediately. She dropped her mouth open at Claude in shock at whatever he had written inside. He shrugged theatrically, the two of them clearly sharing a private joke, before sliding into a chair the table between Byleth and Felix.

“Hi Teach, you wouldn’t happen to be grading my paper, would you?”

“Not until this weekend, and don’t even think about trying to get me to cheat for you.”

“I don’t cheat,” he said taking mock offense. “I make arrangements and strategies.”

“Not this time,” Byleth smiled at the clever boy, “Dean Seteth’s been on my back about hitting a specific average for all of your grades.” She projected the warning to reach Raphael and Hilda.

“Ugh,” Hilda protested, “Does that mean I actually have to study?”

“Yes,” Byleth said firmly, but her mouth tipped upwards into a smile.

“Teach!” Claude said sounding surprised. “Was that a smile, though? You usually only smile when you beat the pants off someone at cards.”

“Do it again professor!” Hilda called from across the room. “I want to see.”

Byleth blushed down into her computer keyboard, not daring to look up and see if Felix was paying attention to any of this.

“Anyway, Teach, I wanted to ask you how your special project is going.”

“My special project?” Byleth asked, raising her eyebrows. Felix narrowed his eyes at her over the screen of his laptop, concerned that she had been blabbing about their unofficial duet.

“You know, the whole finding your ambition thing.” Claude said. His gestures were flippant but his eyes were completely serious. “Figuring out what you want to do and all that.”

“Oh that,” Byleth said quietly, ignoring Felix’s eyes. “I think it’s going well… I’m making progress.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve decided that I want to compose music. I’ve been looking into composition programs. They shouldn’t be too much of a stretch after this musicology masters.”

“Wow, Teach, that’s really cool. And not at all what I expected you to say.”

“Well, I guess I’ve just met someone who makes me want to compose for them.”

Byleth was looking at Claude to avoid any other eyes that might be wandering around the room. She wondered if her face was burning, or if it was just her mouth. She wanted to sink into the soft beats of the music playing on the overhead speakers and disavow her ability to speak forever.

Gratefully, she allowed Claude to fill the silence. “I’m glad you found something,” he said. “You seemed so sad when you texted me that night.”

If any of her other students were worried about how inappropriate it had been for her to text Claude when she was sad, none of them seemed to care. Nonetheless, Byleth felt herself wishing that Claude hadn’t chosen to mention this in such a public space. There was, afterall, one person who seemed interested in the fact that she had texted Claude some night when she was sad.

“I know you and Annette have been working to write music together, so it shouldn’t be that surprising.” Claude chuckled, as if interpreting Byleth’s burning face for shyness regarding her music skills, which could not have been further from the truth. “That new song that you wrote the piano part for sounds really great—Annette played me a sample.”

“I didn’t write that, though,” Byleth said quickly.

“Who did? Annette?” Claude asked, genuinely curious.

“I really don’t know,” Byleth said, feeling a little bad that she hadn’t even asked. Though she remembered somewhat recognizing the handwriting on it

Felix had snapped his laptop closed and was stuffing it into his bag to leave.

“What’s up?” Byleth asked, concerned.

“I have to go,” Felix said quickly before finding his story. “I promised Ingrid I’d meet her and I forgot.”

“Again?” Byleth asked, giving him a small smile. Her smiles were less rare for him, but no one else needed to know that.

“Yeah, gotta go.” He was a few steps away, when he looked back to add apologetically, “I’ll be back to close though.”

“Okay,” Byleth said. Once Felix was out the door, Byleth turned back to Claude. “So are you coming to Annette’s gig, then?”

“You can count on me, Teach. Hey, did you see Dorothea also has something lined up?”

“Oh yeah,” Byleth said casually. “She has someone on saxophone now, right? Ignatz did a hell of a job on those posters.”

“I think she even got Yuri to join her for vocals—now that takes some persuasive power.” Byleth could tell that Claude was watching her carefully for some kind of reaction, whether happiness or hurt. But the expression didn’t come, and Byleth couldn’t manage to feel too concerned. “Bernadetta wrote some songs for the both of them.”

“That sounds pretty awesome, a group of really talented people.” She could tell that Claude was still trying to detect her feelings on the matter, but she really had nothing to offer him.

“Yeah, but I suppose they’re not the only ones though, huh?” he said, closing the subject before Hilda came over to the table to join them with her soldering iron and wires in tow.

* * *

**23\. and I could take away your trips from you**

Felix ignored the homework that was piling up and threatening to make his Sunday miserable. For a while he could put it aside, the same way he was ignoring the pile of text messages his father had sent him—all harping on some stupid idea Rodrigue had, regarding a duet for his stupid concert performance at the university.

“You’re going out early for a Saturday,” Sylvain said from the couch in the shared living room when Felix showed up fully dressed in soft brown cords and a teal t-shirt.

“Astute as always, Sylvain.”

“Will I suffer more verbal abuse if I ask you what you’re up to?” Sylvain asked, looking bored and ready for a distraction.

“That depends. Should I ask why you’re out here?” Felix surveyed the common area, as if it might explain for Sylvain.

“There’s a girl in my bed.” Sylvain said remorsefully.

“Why aren’t you there with her? Or kicking her out?”

“Well she kind of got sick last night. So I thought the gallant thing to do would be to sleep here, and I’m not sure the protocol for ousting her now. Hey, don’t you normally practice in the evening?”

“Juries are coming up,” Felix lied easily.

“What do you think I should do with this girl?” Sylvain asked, looking into his hands, while Felix was already at the door.

“I don’t know—call Ingrid?”

Byleth was already practicing when Felix arrived. Some piece by Liszt, a convoluted waltz. Felix never played Liszt himself. He found him obnoxiously overwrought, and overly complicated—a composer who lost the forest for the trees. Felix preferred his notes clean, precise, and distilled. But it would be a lie to say that he didn’t find Byleth’s chaos a little arousing.

He knocked on the door, and waited until she called “Come in,” before entering.

“Liszt?” he asked raising an eyebrow.

“Liszt,” was her resolute response.

“What a racket,” he teased.

Byleth narrowed her eyes at him. Had he actually offended her? But what she said next threw him for a complete turn-around. “You might have the libido of a sloth,” Byleth said quickly, “but some of us have energy to work out.” Her eyes shifted across her fingers as if she couldn’t be sure where those words had come from.

Seizing his opportunity, Felix taunted her. “What would you know about my libido?” After all, Byleth was so rarely off balance.

“Absolutely nothing,” she said, and _therein lies the problem_.

“Can we table this discussion, then? I still have to warm up.”

Byleth’s eyes went wide, and she flew from the piano stool. By the time she had shuffled herself into the metal folding chair, her face looked composed again. Nonetheless, Felix perceived a hint of embarrassment from the way that she had immediately grabbed a book out of her bag. There was something gratifying about seeing her that way, when she normally came off as so shameless.

Once he indicated that he was done warming up, Byleth slid into the seat next to him. She looked so serious, as she opened the score, that Felix wanted to stick his vicious tongue into her ear, until she yowled and writhed before pushing him away.

They worked through Barcarolle, rehashing the rhythm as if it were a pearl that they were shining and polishing. The better it flowed along, the more triumphant Byleth became. And the more Felix wanted to make her green lamps flicker shut by kissing and nibbling long bites into her neck. The more he wanted to push her up against the wall and test out just how soundproofed and insulated they were.

“Scherzo now?” Byleth asked, honoring her promise to not hold back once they had gotten going.

Excited, Felix took his position for the primo with Byleth leading them from the bass. As they began to work out where their hands needed to be, measure by measure, Felix wasn’t even annoyed when their fingers hit and bumped each other’s. It made him want to grab her hands. It made him want to lay her down on the stiff piano stool and straddle her until they would learn just how well their mutual discomforts could match up.

With the scherzo, Byleth forced Felix into a slightly frenzied tempo. And for the first time, Felix found himself liking the frenzy, even leaning into it. He let himself move into Byleth’s rhythm, realizing that she was keeping everything well and even for him, except where she was purposefully adding chaotic emphasis.

He was making a lot of mistakes, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. And it wasn’t just because this was their first time trying out this movement. The mistakes always seemed to happen when he looked at Byleth—When he looked down at the line of her leg where it extended to pump the pedal, too agressively, artlessly, as if she had never learned how to do it correctly. It was a rough edge to remind him that, unlike him with his classical tutors, she had grown up playing pianos in bars, searching her way through the music among a rock-and-roll crowd that covered Meatloaf and Billy Joel.

He wanted to slip down below that stool and make his way upward between those extended legs, pressing her heat with his face. He bet he could make her crescendo with that proud dive-bar brutality that was always threatening to slip out from under her masked composure.

What did Byleth know about Felix’s libido, indeed? Given the opportunity, he’d have her know it all—every little detail.

“Do we need to take a break?” Byleth asked, taking Felix’s flushed face for exhaustion from the long practice session.

“No—well yes—but it’s probably time to pack it up anyway.”

They had managed to pave their way through the first two sections of the new piece before calling it quits. That was something at least.

“So, Annette’s gig tonight?” Byleth asked casually, unaware of the provocative direction of Felix’s mind.

“You want me to go?”

“Yes. I’m only playing one song, but it would be nice to see a familiar face. If nothing else, just to hang out. Of course, I understand if you don’t like to go to Annette’s shows.” She wasn’t probing, Felix realized, she was just trying to be a compassionate human.

“I have no problem with listening to Annette perform,” Felix managed to sound just as casual as Byleth, probably because it was true.

“So you’ll come then?”

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Yay!”

Felix couldn’t help smiling at her grin.

* * *

**24\. I know-I know-I know, I feel the same as you**

Noble Tea wasn’t made with live performance in mind. Using the space as a venue was always a stretch, even though Ferdinand did what he could to move the tables out of the way for standing space.

The floor was already crowded when Felix arrived. Annette’s gig drew a slightly abbreviated roster of the usual suspects who attended the Mach concerts. Bernadetta was helping Mercedes, Ashe, and Annie set up, finding ways to at least make herself useful if she had to be out of her room. Edelgard was standing with some of her closer friends, including Ferdinand, Hubert, and Dorothea.

Byleth stood with Yuri, both of them composed into kind conversational faces. Felix wondered if they were already friends again? Or, perhaps they had never stopped being friends, despite the rumors that tried to pit them against each other. And Felix himself, well he didn’t know where to be. Jeritza was always easy to scowl next to. But hadn’t Byleth said she wanted to hang out with him? How obvious would it be for him to just step up to where she was talking to Yuri? Channeling his inner Sylvain, Felix walked over to Byleth.

“Hi,” Byleth said.

She surveyed Felix furtively from under her bangs, as Yuri said, “Felix Fraldarius, good to see you.” Felix narrowed his eyes at Yuri, and he twitched slightly feeling Byleth’s eyes and wishing he had changed into better clothes than his usual Saturday casual. “I’ve been admiring your piano playing at each of the open concerts,” Yuri went on. Felix twitched again. Did these two realize just how uncomfortable they were making him.

“It’s what I have to do,” Felix responded, wanting to step on Byleth’s foot to make her take over the conversation.

“Oh I’m sure, I’ve heard all about you Fraldariuses. That skill runs in your blood.”

Something about Yuri reminded him of dealing with Sylvain and Claude—he was another person who would say calculated things, just to gauge how Felix would react.

However, before Felix could be trapped into anything, Byleth scoffed audibly. “Skill doesn’t run in the blood, friend,” she said pointedly to Yuri, keeping her face free from emotion. “Skill is cultivated through practice. Would you sing nearly as well as you do, if you didn’t belt it out in the shower every morning?”

“You’re right about that.” Yuri smiled cordially at Byleth before beginning to step away. “If you’ll excuse me, it looks like they’re done setting up. Looking forward to hearing you play, By,” he said before walking to stand next to Bernadetta who somehow found a little nook to stand in. Felix assumed that Ferdinand had set it up just for her, to make her a little more comfortable.

That left him standing with Byleth, as Dorothea eyed the two of them from across the small tea shop. Dorothea turned away when Yuri began talking to her, and pretty soon they were both gesturing theatrically.

“I’m going to go buy some tea. Do you want anything?” Byleth asked.

“You really need tea at this hour?”

“No, but it is polite to make a purchase from Ferdinand, considering he’s hosting this.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right. But, no, I don’t want anything.” For some reason even the thought of drinking tea was making Felix feel queasy. It was easy enough to be around Byleth in the comfort of the practice rooms or at their Mach shift, but here among everyone it felt so public and confusing.

“Okay,” Byleth said, unfazed as she crossed the room. She pleasantly greeted Edelgard, Hubert, and Ferdinand who were standing by the counter.

“Peppermint tea, please, Lorenz,” she said to her student, who was tending the till.

“With pleasure, Professor,” Lorenz said smoothly. As he turned his back, Byleth dropped a chunk of cash into the tip jar. Ferdinand beamed at her from beside Edelgard.

When the door of the tea shop opened again, Felix found himself uncharacteristically happy to see Dimitri. Dimitri held it open for Ingrid. This was followed by an obnoxious argument between Dedue and Dimitri, regarding who should hold the door for whom, which resulted in Dedue taking the door from Dimitri as a contrite-looking Boar stepped through.

Byleth had barely made it back to the group and stood next to Ingrid, when Annette started playing. She opened with her most popular song, the one she had written in highschool and continued working on for two years until it was perfectly honed to enchant everyone’s hearts.

Felix watched Byleth sway rhythmically where she was standing on the other side of Ingrid. He wondered if there was a smooth way to step over to her and put his arm around her waist. It would have been so obvious, though, just a stupid urge, that’s all.

Five more songs passed before Byleth put her mug down on an empty table and stepped beside the half-foot riser Ferdinand used as a stage. Once the song ended, Byleth stepped onto the riser, and began testing the levels of the keyboard. As she did this, Annette addressed the audience.

“Thanks to everyone for coming out! And I want to thank Byleth Eisner for playing with me, as well. This is an all new song, and it represents a new direction I want to take my music, but I couldn’t have done it without my friends. So I want to say another thank you to Felix Fradarius for helping me write the harmony to this piece.” Felix grimaced a little, as Byleth’s eyes shot directly into his. “It really makes it. Okay, are you ready Byleth?” Byleth looked startled and decidedly unready, but she managed to get her fingers straight as Annette counted down, “1, 2, 3, 4, let’s go!”

Annette was right. Whether Felix would ever admit it to her or not, Byleth played the pop song much better than he would have, even though he had written the part. It was a bitter pill to swallow—except that it wasn’t, because Byleth sounded great playing what he had written, and she looked happy. Byleth bounced her head, her knees loose as she stood up at the keyboard, and her minty green hair floated around her—looking like the utterly lovely punk that her dad had raised her to be.

At the end of the song, they received a lot of applause, from all their friends and a few oddballs who came to see a cute girl sing. Stepping away from the stage area, even Byleth fielded some compliments. Her eyes kept searching out Felix from across the room.

Ingrid turned to him to say, “That was really good right? Annie's definitely getting better.” Felix nodded, wondering how he had become the arbiter of musical taste when he knew next to nothing about pop music.

“Felix,” Dimitri said, warm and bombastic, “You helped Annette write that song?”

“Just the piano part,” Felix mumbled, looking for Byleth’s green hair among the others.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Give it a rest Dimitri,” Ingrid was saying, watching the red color of Felix’s face.

But Dimitri couldn’t help himself from continuing, “I’m surprised you didn’t play it yourself. Though I suppose you and Annette don’t spend as much time together these days. You should let Rodrigue know that you’re writing music, I’m sure he’ll be very proud.”

Felix, annoyed, turned to leave. It wasn’t as easy as he thought, though, as he fought his way to get to the door through the now centrifugal press of bodies. He had said he would come, and so he had. Now that the music was over, there was no reason to stick around.

Stopping mid-way through a conversation with Hubert about open mic nights, Byleth could just about feel Felix bolting out of the tea shop. She said goodbye to her friend and pursued Felix, weaving her way through the bodies with the expertise of someone who had grown up in crowded pubs.

Byleth caught Felix just outside the door of the tea shop. Her foot left the threshold, so that the door would close behind her. She wrapped her strong pianist’s fingers around his wrist and pulled.

“What?—Fuck, you’re strong,” he hissed, realizing who it was and turning around to her.

“Yeah, and I can beat you up,” she said fiercely into his face.

“You got lucky once.” She let go and he shook out his wrist.

“Don’t kid yourself,” she teased. The bravado was mostly false, though. A real fist fight between the two of them would always be a tough match. Jeralt has taught Byleth well, while touring on the road, and she was willing to place a bet on herself. But Felix was fast and scrappy. “Why are you running? Is it because you wrote that piano part?”

“No, I just had to get out of there.” Felix wasn’t petty enough to tell Byleth how Dimitri had mentioned his father. By this time, though, she had spent enough time with him to read it on his face.

“So you really did write that piano part, then?” she asked, letting herself soften as she only did around him.

“I did,” he said looking uncomfortable.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, still confused about what he was hiding, or rather _why_ he was hiding something.

“It didn’t seem important,” he said.

“But why didn’t you play it instead of me?”

Finally, she could see that she had asked the right question. Something crushed and confused entered his face. It sharpened his edges in the way hard caramel becomes brittle, right before it crackles and breaks.

Byleth probably couldn’t help the way her expression softened looking at him.

“I offered to play it. She chose you, instead,” Felix spoke bitterly and refused to look at her.

“When was this?” Byleth asked, as part of the riddle fell into place.

“Before we—uh, started dueting,” he chanced a glanced at Byleth’s green eyes and saw only kindness there, not the teasing, not the rejection he had been expecting.

Byleth rolled the pieces of the puzzle over in her mind: How Felix had asked her to teach him. His incessant competition with her. The long hours he spent practicing to develop a new style. His fierce look whenever someone brought up Annette’s gig.

“Well, she’s an idiot,” Byleth spoke proudly into the brittle burnt caramel of Felix’s narrowed eyes. It was a little lie—Byleth had always liked Annette—but it felt like the right thing to say at the time, as did this, “I would have chosen you to play.” And she let her voice soften to the molten warmth in her expression, just about singing it up to him, she said, “I’d choose you any day, any time.”

But there was more to it, there was so much more to what she felt. She didn’t know how exactly to frame it into words. She was feeling the sweet need in his eyes, which were now, as they so rarely did, looking steadily into hers. It set her boundaries crashing and burning along with his.

His eyes grew wide, the brittleness crumbling from them, as she rose gently onto her toes and kissed him softly on the lips. It was a peck that turned into a brush and a linger. It lasted for seconds—an eternity in the lifespan of a music chord and yet just a blip on an average musical track.

Byleth had to wonder if she had just communicated the one thing they had silently agreed they never would. If so, it might ruin everything they had been building. It was only a matter of time before she inevitably burned it all down, anyway.

For his part, Felix felt the kiss fill a hollow inside of him he didn’t realize was there. And when she separated from him, he felt that she had taken him with her, separating him from his body. He closed his eyes exhaling a long breath.

Byleth rested gently back down on her heels and stepped away from him, thinking that was that. And hopefully he would feel better about the whole thing soon. She turned her burning face from him, wondering who would be a suitable rebound when he pushed her away for good this time.

But Felix closed the distance between them. He pressed the space between his body and the part of himself that she had taken along with her. One hand pushed her hips against his, the other held onto the small of her back, as he hugged her the way he had wanted to for so long.

He leaned his head down to kiss her, letting his bangs and fly-aways tickle them both, as he pushed into her lips. He pressed with all the need for her warmth and validation that had long been aching through him. She opened her mouth under his; she let him in. And she sunk into him in a way that was at once self-betrayal and self-fulfillment.

It took tremendous willpower to come out of that embrace. She slipped in his reach, pulling her burning face away from his. She murmured, “Alright alright alright, this isn’t the place though.”

It almost stung to feel hand Felix’s hand shift, from where it had been holding tightly to her back, to where it was now falling away. She was separating them more to protect him than herself, aware of all his friends in the tea shop who might at any moment curiously wander out.

“You’re right,” he said, straightening up but looking disappointed.

“I should go back inside,” she said.

“Okay,” he whispered down to her. “I’m going to leave.”

“I understand,” she said, even though it made her a little sad. “Are you going to the party tonight?”

“I thought I might,” he said hoping this was what she wanted him to say.

“Or…” How should she tell him that she would rather be alone with him, than go to another loud party?

“ _Or?_ ” He backed away another step, eyes on the tea shop, as if at any moment an assault force would burst from it.

“You could meet me back here, about 10pm? I know a spot, and I’d like to show you.”

“Okay,” he said, his eyes were unguarded, even kind.

“I’ll see you soon, then,” she said, before he nodded and turned to walk away. Byleth thought she knew where he was going, where she could always find him, in the practice rooms, playing whatever frustration he was feeling out onto the piano.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A composer friend once told me that he fell in love with his violinist fiancee, because, before even knowing him, she was able to play his pieces exactly how he imagined them. She's the one who plays his music the best, and that special communication has haunted me for a long time now.
> 
> Most people seem to interpret their Byleth and Felix's relationship with Felix becoming Byleth's right-hand (swords)man, and I like that dynamic. So, my thinking has been, Strategist **:** Composer **::** Right-hand (Swords)man **:** Perfectly Interpreting Pianist.
> 
> Thank you for your support and comments. I really enjoy communicating with you all.


	5. Romance: Make Your Mind Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- Sylvain and Felix primping  
> \- Campfire backstories  
> \- Erotica and Tenderness  
> \- Something on the wrong side of cruel  
> \- Sylvain showing what a real man looks like

**25\. but I haven’t got a stitch to wear**

Felix, however, didn’t go to the practice rooms as Byleth had imagined. Instead, he headed to his suite, his mind burning with nerves and pride.

When he arrived, Sylvain was already there walking in and out of the common room in various states of undress. Felix sidled up to where Sylvain was primping in their only mirror. “Can’t you go somewhere else for a minute? You have an hour before the stupid party anyway.”

“Yeah but I’m meeting someone.” Felix couldn’t tell who he was winking at in the mirror—Himself? Felix? Some imaginary girl? “Aren’t you going to ask me who?”

“I don’t care,” Felix said. It wasn’t entirely the truth. Felix always rooted for Dorothea whenever Sylvain showed any real interest in a girl. But it would be a lot easier if they stopped their little game of flirting with other people to make each other jealous, and instead, got on with flirting with each other.

That night, though, Felix just wanted Sylvain to stop flirting with the mirror and leave, so that he could use it without having to answer too many questions. So, he dilly-dallied, changing into a clean pair of black chinos and over-examining his button down and vest. He could have put his hair up blind if he had to, but he wanted to do this thing right.

Because he didn’t know if it actually was a date. He and Byleth had kissed, that much was true. And she was intending to meet him alone, where there wouldn’t be a piano in front of them.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, turning his big brown eyes on Felix who continued pacing like a wolf in a cage. “I don’t think I’m the only one who’s primping here.”

Sylvain’s eyes alighted on a small glass bottle that Felix had been tossing between his hands with indecision. Before Felix could catch it and hide it away, Sylvain recognized the very small bottle as the cologne he used to wear when he had dated Annette. It smelled like pine trees, tree sap, and aromatic smoke. He thought Byleth might like that, after all she liked smoke—a little too much. But was it too presumptuous if this weren’t, after all, a date?

“Felix,” Sylvain said again, strangling himself to resist calling out more shrilly. “Is that the bottle of cologne Annette gave you. Wait a minute… You went to Annette’s concert,” Sylvain began, putting two and two together and getting eight, which wasn’t Sylvain’s fault at all. He usually had very good arithmetic, but Felix hadn’t given him all the variables, because Felix never told him anything. “You’re primping and about to put on the cologne that Annette gave you— Are you relapsing? Do you have a date with Annette?”

“No way,” Felix said, making a face like a sick cat. “I’m not interested in her, and she’s not interested in me.”

“Oh really? Well you’re definitely getting ready for someone.” Felix didn’t answer. Any response would give him away. “Who is it? You have to tell me, Felix!”

“No I don’t.” Felix seized the opportunity to stand in front of the mirror and fix up his bun. He considered for a moment—under the full scrutiny of Sylvain—tying it in a simple pony tail. That felt too relaxed, though, so he pushed and pulled at it until it formed his usual style. Predictably, some shorter strands of the soft hair fell out to hang around his face.

“Edelgard?” Sylvain asked, until Felix gave him that sick cat look again. “Hilda? Petra? I bet she could be your type, though she’s not stuffy enough for you. Leonie? Nah, she talks to much. Mercie? No way.”

Felix was stomping the short distance toward Sylvain, fist raised and eyes narrowed to stifle the other boy with a punch.

“Who else? Hmm, who do you have shift with…”

Felix stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening.

“The Professor, isn’t it?” Sylvain was getting ready to dismiss this too, until he saw Felix’s face. The bright rose madder of his blush had risen from his cheeks all the way up to his hairline. “It’s the Professor?” Sylvain’s mouth hung open.

“Her name’s Byleth.” Felix’s words came out in angry puffs.

“I know that.” Sylvain still hadn’t recovered.

“And she’s not really a Professor.”

“Sure, it’s just a nickname. But Fe,” he whistled his appreciation. It was the only vaguely musical sound he knew how to make. “Good work.” Felix could feel his blush burn like a bushfire across his face. “Is it a date then? Or are you taking her to Dimitri’s?”

“We’re not going to Dimitri’s, but I also don’t know if it’s a date.”

“Well what did she say? You have to give me context—unless you expect me to believe you asked her.”

Felix wanted to say that he kind of did. That he was the one who had asked her to duet, and he deserved credit for that at least. Even more than wanting the credit, though, he wanted his interactions with Byleth to be their secret.

“She said there was somewhere she wanted to show me. After we kissed.” Felix was grimacing at Sylvain, every word was causing him pain, like some dark magic spell that was scorching the back of his throat.

Sylvain didn’t make it any better by whistling again. “You kissed? Now you really do have to give me details.”

“Disgusting, I’m not telling you anything more.” Felix sputtered the words as if they were a Latin incantation to ward off evil.

Sylvain just laughed, “You know, though, Fe, it kind of sounds like it’s on. Do you like her?”

“Well, she’s an amazing musician…” Sylvain raised his eyebrows. There was a quiet pause, as Felix were weighed his words to make them dear and genuine, but then he burst out like a powder keg, “But I don’t give a fuck about her.” It didn’t even sound fierce to Felix’s own ears. He could feel the blush raging across his cheeks, and his hands, normally so dextrous, almost fumbled the small bottle of cologne. Worse than anything, though, his mouth was forming a smile against his will.

“Ah, that’s exactly what I needed to hear, Fe.” Sylvain said, smiling all the way to his boyish eyes. “You should put on the cologne. Even if it’s not really her thing, it will let her know how little you care about her.” And before Felix could hiss any other curses at Sylvain, the other boy smirked his way to his bedroom. “And don’t be late,” he called back over his shoulder, before he shut the door.

Felix leaned his forehead against the mirror to cool off his raging blush.

* * *

**26\. I know a place where it’s warm and it’s dry, dear**

Byleth was waiting for him in front of the locked up Noble Tea, just as she said she would be. And Felix let out a little breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

She wore a soft little skirt, her usual patterned tights, and a blouse that was dipping mercilessly low. It wasn’t far off of what she would usually wear to a party, but Felix suddenly found it wonderfully suggestive. She was also carrying a large tote bag, bundled onto one of her shoulders.

“Hi,” Felix said, swallowing hard. Was he supposed to kiss her again? Would he be allowed to? But when she smiled up at him with those bright eyes, he felt a little more at ease. Stopping just in front of her, he thought about pushing her up against the closed tea shop and kissing her long and hard. But that seemed a little forward.

“Thank goddess it’s still nice out,” Byleth said. She touched his elbow to lead him.

“Where are we going?” Felix asked, falling into step beside her. Their shoulders brushed as they walked, the same way they did when they sat next to each other at the piano.

“You don’t mind staying outside, do you? This might be one of the last balmy nights we get.”

“That’s fine with me,” Felix said. She led him down Main Street through the closed and quiet historical district. If they kept walking this way, they would soon find themselves on a smaller residential road that led to trailheads and a cul-de-sac.

Felix felt something hit his shoulder, from where she shifted her bag. “Should I—” No that wasn’t right, and she was already looking at him expectantly. “Let me take that,” he said, lifting the bag from her shoulder and replacing it on his own.

“Thank you,” she spoke plainly, but Felix got a nice reward when her hand found his. He could feel himself blushing into the night. “Not much further now,” Byleth said, as the road narrowed.

They walked for another five minutes, before Byleth pulled him along a small trail he wouldn’t have seen from the road. Trees closed over them, and their feet crunched twigs as they walked. At the end of the trail was a small clearing with a grated fire pit and a few thick logs used for seating.

Felix heard the crickets around them, and the stars were bright overhead, far from the light pollution of campus.

“This is it,” Byleth said, gesturing that he should put the bag down. She began reaching into it, pulling out odds and ends that showed she was clearly prepared for that evening. She handed him a bottle of whiskey. “You like your rye, right?” Felix nodded, looking appreciatively at the bottle. Byleth wandered around the clearing, picking up logs and twigs. “I didn’t bring any cups. Hope that’s okay.”

“It’s just fine,” Felix said. He opened the bottle and took a long swig, feeling the liquor light him up all the way to his ears.

“Do you need any help?” he asked, bringing her the bottle.

She put down the chunk of wax and laundry lint that she was using as a homemade firestarter, and grabbed the whiskey. “I can get us started, but could you find a few more logs that we can use.”

Felix smiled and went off. Out of all the chores she gave him, this one was the most up his alley. He wandered the outskirts of the clearing, gathering loose wood and checking to make sure that it wasn’t too damp.

Behind him, he smelled melting beeswax as Byleth lit the firestarter she had brought with her. It didn’t take long for the little pyre to catch. Felix gravitated back toward the warmth and the light.

“You’re good at that,” he said, watching as Byleth tipped the bottle up again.

“Thanks. My dad and I traveled a lot in a camper, back when he was touring. A nice night like this, and we would always light a fire and sleep under the stars.”

She reached into the tote bag and pulled out a quilted blanket that she draped over one of the log seats. Then, she sat down in front of the fire and pulled Felix to sit next to her, handing him the bottle.

“That actually seems like a nice way to grow up,” Felix said, after taking a swig.

“In some ways, it really was.” He wasn’t sure if he had sent her some signal, but he was glad when she leaned lightly against him.

“You’re close to your dad,” Felix said slowly, willing himself to relax. Why did he bring that up? Dads weren’t a relaxing topic at all.

But it was worth it when Byleth smiled. “Yeah, it was just the two of us growing up. He taught me everything he knew and then sent me off.”

“I’ve heard a few of his recordings.” Byleth didn’t say anything. Her hand rested on his knee. “There was one track where a pianist was playing some honky-tonk in the background.” Byleth laughed. “You can play anything, can’t you?”

“No way,” she said standing up to shift logs on the fire. “I can’t play Bach for shit. And you’d critique the hell out of my Mozart or anything Classical, really. Beethoven is the oldest I get.”

“Glenn was like that too,” Felix said quietly. She crouched and used a long stick to stoke the fire with her back to him.

“Your brother?” Her words were careful, but he knew them for what they were—an invitation.

“He played a lot like you. His signature was on every note, so that you could always tell it was him.”

“He got sick?” Byleth asked, sitting down next to him.

“He was always sick. It just got worse and worse.” He could tell that his words were harsh. To reassure her, he wrapped his arm around her waist. That was surely the whiskey getting to his head, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“And there was no way to save him?” she prompted, both of them knowing full well that she had already read all about it.

“No.”

“Felix, I’m sorry.”

He put his mouth on hers to keep her from saying something else stupid.

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he said, when the kiss ended.

“Fine,” she said harshly, but her hands raised to play with the ends of his hair. “Then tell me about Rodrigue.”

“What do you want to know?” His fingers traced adagios up and down her side. It was always annoying to talk about Rodrigue, but there was something pleasantly distracting about the press of his fingers against Byleth’s blouse.

“Why won’t you duet with him?”

“Why do you care?”

“I have my reasons.” Felix humphed. His hand tensed on her side. But Byleth didn’t pry if she didn’t have good reason to.

“Rodrigue sees everything as a marketing opportunity. Intellectually, I can understand it. The music world is harsh, and you need every lead and leg up you can get to thrive. Fraldariuses aren’t content to fade away and become private music teachers.” Felix’s face was as bitter as his words.

“When his composer partner, Lambert—you know the Boar’s dad—died, he started with his memorial tours. Same thing with Glenn. When we couldn’t hide Glenn’s sickness from the media, it became a marketing ploy. His suffering was poetry—come watch him waste away as he pours his soul out into his music.”

Felix realized that his hand was clenched at her side. He purposefully opened his fist and smoothed out his hand. “If he wants to play a duet with me, it won’t be because he cares. It’s just marketing—put the father and son on stage to draw a crowd.”

Felix needed more distraction. He nipped at Byleth’s ear with his teeth, smiling when she yelped and jumped a little in his hold. “Now,” he said, “Tell me why you care about a stupid duet with my dad.”

“I just think you should do it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll have to if you don’t.” As she had expected, Felix pulled back at this, looking angry. “And I think it would be good for you. And,” she turned into him and spoke the words into his face, wearing the narrowed eyes of a challenge, “if I have to learn a Vivaldi piece, you will never hear the end of it.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll consider it." He dropped the matter. "So, you told Claude you want to compose?”

“I sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Felix’s arm was back to softly holding her waist.

Her expression was raw in the way that only he ever got to see it. Eyes, wide and nervous, searching for validation. “I’ve been writing a prelude.”

“You should play it for me sometime.” He meant it.

“Actually, I was hoping that _you_ would do _me_ the honor of playing it.” But, when Felix didn’t say anything, Byleth felt that dropping pit feeling of rejection. “Or you don’t have to, of course, I know you’re busy, juries are coming up and…”

He kissed her again. “No need to ramble,” he said. “I’ll play anything you write.”

Byleth sighed. He felt her body relax, and then she pivoted out of his embrace and stood to put more logs on the fire. He watched her skirt ride up her thighs, as she bent to place and poke the logs. He let his eyes ride up with it, before taking a long gulp from the bottle, now relaxed enough that the acerbic liquor wasn’t sending him shivers.

Now that they were voicing all the unspoken things between them, there was still one tabled discussion that Felix wanted to revisit, hopefully non-verbally.

It took less than two steps to stand beside Byleth. He put out his hands to pull her up out of her crouch. She let him pull her into his arms again. He could feel the tempo of his heartbeat rising as she turned her head upward to him, her lips already parting in anticipation. And when he kissed her, it was as a man determined to drown in her oceans and never find shore again.

Felix was still clinging to her when she began kicking at the blanket. The kicks made it clear that she intended to pull the blanket into the open space in front of the fire, and Felix couldn't argue with that. “Alright alright alright,” Felix said with each centimeter he pulled away from her mouth, before they tugged the blanket into the cleared space and he tackled her onto it.

* * *

**27\. let me take you there**

At first touch, he began exploring her like she was a precious object that he didn’t deserve to be near. Between the violence of his combative tongue and the harsh glares that he used to protect everything soft and moving within his chest, he didn’t feel as if he deserved to set a campaign of exploration across her skin.

And so, there was something about his earnestness, the expert tracings of his fingers, as if she was a score he had been dying to sight-read, that allowed him to remove piece-by-bloody-vicious-piece the mask she hid behind. His careful touch removed all the fortifications that she had built for herself. His fingers unfastened her, like pieces of armor screwed into the fragile bits of herself that she thought she had lost to her past.

With one hand he stroked her down her neck feeling the foundation of her spine underneath. Then, cradling her like a cello, he turned her toward him. His other hand moved to explore down her body and his lips followed.

Thin as his lips were, they pressed her favorite kisses. It all began so carefully, until the kissing was raining down harder. Vulnerable under his careful attention and a hot desire—that for once did not just want her body—Byleth accepted the unspoken challenge to open him up as well. She pressed her hands into his back, determined to strip away his anger, anesthetize his damage, and evoke the music within.

When she touched him, she imagined that she was unscrewing his hard wooden casing and opening him up like a music box to see the mechanics beneath. Under her fingers, she sought to free him from his clockwork. Every movement was bent on unleashing the unmeasured, reckless rhythms he kept so tightly bound inside himself.

She couldn’t tell what was more satisfying, the way he shivered under her hands, so sensitive even when she had only reached up under his shirt, or the soft plosive sighs he made when she slipped her fingers into his hair.

He pulled his face away from her body, and his jaw clenched around other, more free noises, that she swore to herself she would uncage before their work was done. But, for the moment, Byleth couldn’t stand not touching skin-to-skin without the barriers of cloth or bluster.

She withdrew her hands from under his shirt, illiciting an annoyed look. He attempted to bridge them by pulling her head forward for kissing, as if asking her, _You won’t leave, will you? You wouldn’t dare stop this here?_ And also, _If you do, that means I win—If you do that, it means we both lose_.

She shook her head, and he relaxed when he realized that the she already had his vest unbuttoned and pushed aside. Then, she was swiftly working her way down the buttons of his shirt.

Smiling into her mouth, his fingers inched under the hem of her blouse, cinching and pleating the material upward, until he had the opening to pull the soft silk blouse over her head. He set it aside with more care and respect than she had treated his vest, before unlatching the gentle curve of her balconette to set it aside.

“Felix…” she said into his mouth as their bodies moved together, and he responded by pressing his tongue further into her mouth. His hands moving and warming every part of her that was exposed. Until it wasn’t enough.

His hands grabbed under her ass, torn between the need to hold her and the desire to pull her onto his lap. Feeling his intention, she moved to straddle him.

The position, after all, gave her the ideal vantage to do what she had wanted to do since she had first laid eyes on him. She untied the wrap around his bun, and relaxed his hair down to his shoulders before wrapping her fingers into it. Felix groaned into her chest at the gentle tugging, willing it harder, as he and Byleth grinded in an overwhelming tremoring bass-line of small thrusts and deeper desires.

“Should we talk about this?” Felix asked into her collar bone. His hands were sick of being so polite, as they began reaching under her skirt to trace the patterns on her tights over the inner lines of her thighs and upward.

“No way.” She groaned into his hair, bringing her face down to inhale the strong campfire smell it had already caught. She pressed kisses on his head, lingering on his perfect hairline, with his bangs pushed aside.

“Then you want…”

“Yes.” She could feel his musicbox heart pressing against her chest, and she wanted to hold and consume everything he was.

“Alright,” he murmured, before lifting her slightly, with her legs still straddling him, and laying her down on her back. He pressed between her legs. “How’s this?” He asked, soaking in the bared shores of her skin—hidden lands he had only dreamed about, when the guilty rye had put him under.

“Felix,” Byleth said looking up into his eyes, her hand on one lean shoulder, and both of these points of contact holding him there like a butterfly pinned. “You can relax. I want you, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

For a split second, Felix’s face transformed as if filled with anger, and he looked like he might say something scathing. Then, the anger fell away, leaving his eyes suffused with warmth, desire, and something else so sincere that it threatened to hollow her out from the center. “You too,” he breathed into her stomach as he moved his face downward, kissing and nibbling. He slipped her skirt and tights over her hips and down her legs.

He began rubbing at her, all the while staring into her face with the kind of burning intensity that made even Byleth feel shy. He slipped a finger inside her and watched her twitch and sway into the sensation, before adding to it.

“Come up here,” Byleth groaned, delighted by the sensations but missing his warmth and his body to hold.

“I’m working on something here,” he said narrowing his eyes and still moving his fingers to watch her bite her lip and flush. But she sat herself up enough to put her hands on his shoulders with the threat of pulling him up to her by force.

He let her drag him, his face falling into the hollow of her neck, as her hands moved purposefully to his waist, and then to begin unbuttoning his pants. “We can play later. Tonight, I just really want you.” Her hand traced the hard line of his cock, before pushing the pants down far enough for him to get the hint.

With a similar intense look to the one he pulled on her earlier, she watched as he removed the clothes from the long line of his legs. His movements were awkward, slightly shy. Byleth couldn’t help but find him beautiful in the firelight, as his soft hair floated upon his shoulders, some of it kinked and bent into wild angles after the tight hold of his bun.

Byleth tore her eyes away to find a condom from her bag. As she pulled it matter-of-factly from its wrapping, Felix’s eyes narrowed harshly to find her thus prepared. But rather than being a turnoff, it only made him more determined to claim her, to make her say his name again, to make her call it out.

At first, Felix moved tenderly inside her. But the more she bit and kissed and sucked at his shoulder and neck, the harder she tugged at his hair, and shuddered gloriously when he pressed his strong fingers into her thighs and his mouth nipped at her ear, the more permission he received to take her harder and faster. The music box inside of him raced along, ticking out movements that appeared controlled, until with each hit and beat, it sent them writhing together.

“Switch me,” Byleth said suddenly.

“Huh?” Felix asked mind bleary and pupils dilated.

“I want to be on top now,” Byleth said fiercely. Felix had enough presence of mind to give her a wild smirk, before picking them up with his hands supporting her thighs and quickly inverting their embrace.

“My turn,” Byleth said sparking her competitive streak, “to control the tempo."

“Suit yourself,” Felix said between gasps from the intensity of the new position, and Byleth felt that she could stay drunk on the amber rye of his eyes.

And she let the seas take over her, rocking with the waves of her internal rhythm, that perfect imperfection. Felix felt the music box inside him echoing Byleth’s boat songs, the flow and rocking only she could evoke, and he rocked with her, reaching his hands up to touch her soft green hair, like sails shifting majestically with their movement.

He rocked with her as the heat between them built, pushing on each of her nerves to steer and stir her, as she moved fluidly over him and him inside her. The movement so perfect, the tempo so offbeat, and the heat building and building until he felt like he would burst from it. Until he knew that he would burst from it.

And whatever Byleth was feeling must have become unbearable too, because her hands raised away from their exploration of his chest and rose in the air like fists. She was making that overwhelmed expression that she only wore when the music was turned up loud enough that she could unravel completely. As her body pulsed around his and the friction and the heat and the pulsing and her expression, he exploded until he felt like all the blood had gone out of his body.

He pulled her against him, riding out the afterglow, as she pulled up the edge of the blanket to wrap it over them. It wasn’t from any shyness on her part but to honor the rare sense of intimacy she felt just then.

She curled into him, fitting their bodies into the curves and arabesques presented to each other. With one hand free, Felix softly skimmed his fingers over her arm, over the soft skin of her breast, and the firm space over her ribs.

“That…that was…” But he struggled to say exactly what it was.

“Felix,” she said, sighing into the word and swallowing the harsh ‘x’ sound into the back of her throat. “I know, I know.”

“I could do that forever with you.”

_Me too, so good, so beautiful, I know I know._

* * *

**28\. I think I need a new heart**

Felix was fucked too dumb to feel properly disappointed, when Byleth insisted on walking him home and dropped him off there with a kiss to sleep by himself. He might have been confused, when she stepped into the night to sleep in her own apartment, but they would have plenty of time to discuss it in the future.

If he didn’t have the hickeys as proof, and a hard-to-pinpoint sense of relaxation deep in his bones, he might have thought that the previous night was just a long dirty dream. He gave himself the wee hours of the morning to nurse his hangover and think about Byleth’s hair in between his fingers, the press of her body, the soft warmth of her mouth, the sound of her breathy groans. His heart squeezed, among other bodily organs.

If he was disappointed when he checked his phone and found no message from Byleth, he brushed it off under the assumption that she had perhaps slept in herself. And he kept brushing her silence off, and he kept brushing it off until he was cracked and brittle.

He let his mind cling to assumptions that, like him, her work had piled up over the weekend as well, and Sunday would be full of tiny busy things. Or perhaps she was waiting on him to say something?

He opened his phone to start drafting a few messages. _Hi, How are you?_ No. _What are you up to?_ No.

The problem, Felix realized as he scrolled through their string of messages, was that they always had a point when messaging each other. And what was his point now? Just that he liked her, obviously, and he wanted to be around her. And if he had to live through Sunday, he’d like to spend it with her. _I have a lot to do, but do you want to work together this evening?_ But Felix deleted that too.

And he waited.

He worked on essays. He read his dull-as-dirt music theory textbook. And he waited.

Desperately needing to step out of his apartment, Felix went to Mach coffee house, where he knew Ingrid and Dorothea shared the Sunday shift.

Felix settled into the porch swing next to Ingrid. He had finished writing the essay he would have to turn in the next morning, and was giving it time to simmer before going back in for edits that evening. He propped his music theory textbook open on his knee, turning to a page that looked more like arithmetic and physics than it did music.

“Is something wrong, Felix?” They had been sitting in silence for just under an hour before Ingrid’s words broke in. “I missed you at Dimitri’s party last night.”

Felix shrugged, mumbling something about how he didn’t feel like going.

“And it had nothing to do with Annette’s performance?” He shrugged again. “Or Byleth?” Ingrid asked wryly.

Felix could feel the blush rising into his face. His hand unconsciously twitched to where he knew he Byleth had left a hickey above his collar bone, mercifully hidden by his black turtleneck.

Ingrid swept her eyes away from him to give him privacy. “Everyone likes the idea of the two of you guys together, you know. If you’re worried about meeting resistance, you don’t have to be.”

“I don’t care what everyone likes,” Felix growled. He cared what Byleth liked. But Byleth didn’t like him enough to wake up and immediately text him. Byleth hadn’t tried to pull him back to her side that day, even after everything they had shared.

He could tell Ingrid this, but he hated the fact that Ingrid would witness that he, Felix, had not been something that Byleth had liked. “Have you seen Byleth today?” Felix asked, knowing that Ingrid was better integrated into many of the social circles than he was.

“No,” Ingrid yawned, “But I’ve been practicing all day for the big match next week.” Rugby. Felix had forgotten. He hadn’t gone to see her play once yet that semester, and it made him feel a little guilty.

“I slept with her,” Felix said quietly.

Ingrid’s eyes grew huge. It wasn’t unexpected, but it did seem a little sudden. “Did you stay the night?” she asked tentatively.

“No, she walked me home and then left. And she hasn’t sent me anything today.”

“Have you sent her anything, though?” Ingrid ran her hair through her blunt-cut blond hair, like a detective musing over a tough mystery.

“No. I keep thinking about it and then stopping myself.”

“Maybe she’s doing the same thing. You guys are a lot alike.” Ingrid always had a really clear perspective, but Felix wasn’t sure she was right about this one.

When he returned to his suite, he locked himself into his room, avoiding Sylvain’s gossipy kiss-and-tell ambush for as long as he could.

Reclining in his bed, he sent Byleth a message.

 _Felix:_  
_Hope your day was good. Things are busy, but let’s at least practice on Saturday again. And if you need some company while you work- we could do that._  
[sent 9:04 pm]

Monday was long. Monday was full of classes and Dean Seteth breathing down his neck. Monday meant lunch with Sylvain and the kind of uncertainty that made Felix want to jab his fork into Sylvain’s neck, when Sylvain asked how his date had gone.

“It was good,” Felix said, twitching his fork in his hand and barely touching the spicy skewer on his plate.

“Just good?” Sylvain was smiling, but something about Felix’s demeanor—probably the threatening flourishes he was making with his fork—made him warry of taking the teasing too far.

“No, not just good.”

“Amazing?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to murder me?”

“She hasn’t said anything since.” This time Sylvain’s arithmetic was spot on—there was no doubt in his mind that they had slept together.

“Have you called her?”

“Texted. Last night, and she hasn’t responded.”

Sylvain looked momentarily concerned, but he covered it up with a smile. “Well, you know her better than I do, Fe. Does she usually answer right away?”

“No, but this is weird.”

“How did you end the date?”

“Well, we put our clothes back on.” The fork twitched dangerously in Felix’s hands at Sylvain’s open-mouthed smirk, making Sylvain glad that the dining hall didn’t stock sharp knives. “And she walked me back to our place. And we kissed. And I went up, and she went home. At least, I think she went home. You don’t think she’s been abducted, do you?”

Felix couldn’t handle the pity in Sylvain’s expression then. He dropped the fork entirely.

“How did you two even get to this point? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Felix did mind, but for the moment he needed Sylvain’s unique wisdom like a shot of rye. So he told him everything—How he had asked Byleth to duet. How their project had become more important to him than anything else he was working on. How things between him and Byleth had been tense from the start, and they had just heated up from there.

For his part, Sylvain listened without saying anything that would hurt Felix. The pieces were falling into place, and if Sylvain’s wisdom told him anything, there was a clear villain and a clear victim, and the villain he could spot anywhere because she was using strategies just like his own.

It was after 3pm when Byleth finally responded.

 _Byleth:_  
_Yes to Saturday. Sorry, I’ve been busy._  
[sent 3:39 pm]

 _Felix:_  
_I understand._  
[sent 4:01 pm]

He didn’t. How hard was it to respond to a quick text?

 _Felix:_  
_Do you want to get dinner?_  
[sent 4:04 pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Sorry, I have something due. I was just going to eat some apples and peanut butter. But rain check?_  
[sent 4:06 pm]

 _Felix:_  
_Sure_  
[sent 4:07pm]

It wasn’t a surprise to Felix that graduate students tended to the biggest wrecks on campus. So maybe she was just busy. But hadn’t they had a nice time? Hadn’t she felt something? He had felt something, and he could tell she had felt something about him, hadn’t she?

There was no word from Byleth until Thursday, and even then it wasn’t really a word. It was Felix showing up to the Mach shift twenty minutes late. He stood in the doorway, watching Byleth, who was sitting at the table counting the drawer, and he was scowling like his life depended on it. Byleth finally raised her eyes to him, face blank like she was talking to some random other coworker.

“So what’s going on?” Felix asked.

“What do you mean?” Her voice was plain, emotionless. He hated it.

“You know. Don’t be an idiot.” There was no warmth in this. Felix was looking at her with his stiff, cut-from-ice expression. Byleth raised herself from the table and walked over to him.

She stopped about an arm’s distance away from him. He moved a step toward her, wanting her closer but his eyes didn’t soften, and fierce lines were etched between his eyebrows.

Byleth reached out a hand, touching a soft spear of hair to tuck it behind his ear, but he jerked away, swatting at her with his hand in a less-than-gentle cuff.

“You’re avoiding me again,” he growled.

“Would I be here if I were?” She asked, looking a little too pleased with herself.

“Yes. Because you want to fight about it, and I’ll give you a fight. So what gives, Byleth? How hard is it to answer a text message? You don’t want to see me?”

“Of course I want to see you, Felix, you’re really speci—.”

“Shut up. You know what I mean.”

“Okay. About Saturday. I think we moved a little too quickly.”

“The fuck we did.” He breathed through his nose, but it didn’t seem to do anything to calm him. “You didn’t seem to think that at the time—leading us to a secluded campfire, putting your hand all over my knee, unbuttoning my shirt. For fucks sake, Byleth, you hooked up with Yuri the first day of orientation. How did we move too quickly?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Word travels, Byleth. You should know that by now.”

“But this isn’t—With you it’s—” Felix raised his eyebrows, not smoothing out the angry lines cut between them. If he was inching his face toward her again, it wasn’t important. But Byleth took a step back, “We need to open soon. Like right now.”

“What’s it matter?” he asked as she zipped by him. She brushed his side and grabbed his hand to give it a squeeze. Felix wished he could find the gesture comforting, but it was all just damn confusing.

Byleth avoided him for the rest of the evening, in that stupid way she had of acting like she wasn’t avoiding him. She shot him furtive looks that turned into fake smiles every time he caught her.

The night was dull. The presence of one or two other people, a complete nuisance. Felix was grateful for the closing chores, and even more grateful when Byleth played the closing song over the speakers to kick the others out.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Byleth said as he stood next to her on the porch while she locked the door.

“Then don’t.” Before Byleth could say anything more, Felix leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips. “Goodnight Byleth,” he said, hoping she could hear all the of the hostility suffused into his voice. He turned and quickly walked down the steps. Byleth was still standing there frozen. Without turning around, he said, “Don’t forget—we’re practicing on Saturday.”

He walked home, too much on his mind to even think about completing any more work. He didn’t expect any messages from Byleth, but it still annoyed him when they didn’t come. When his father called Friday morning, he actually answered the phone.

* * *

**29\. so if you really love me, say yes**

When Saturday afternoon came around, Byleth knocked on the door to the practice room. Felix answered looking exhausted. “I’m practicing something for my juries. Warm up in the other room, and I’ll join you in a minute?”

“That’s fine,” Byleth said lightly, keeping her expressionless mask firmly on her face.

She had worked her way through some of her soft Mendelssohn pieces for warmup when Felix came into the practice room. He didn’t say anything, quietly settling onto the stool with her. Byleth busily began setting aside her Mendelssohn book, waiting for Felix to pull out the duet score that they practiced together.

When Byleth sat back up the duet score wasn’t there. Instead, the stool creaked as Felix turned his body turned toward hers. He put his hand to the back of Byleth’s neck and grasped her hair more tightly than was warranted. There was a sense of stress, need, and fury when he pushed his lips on hers. Part of it was very sexy, and she opened her mouth automatically as his tongue flicked its way inside.

Then, she jerked back, making Felix’s hand pull more tautly on her hair, before he realized what was happening and dropped his hand.

“What are you doing?” Byleth asked, feeling rattled.

“I was sticking my tongue down your throat, which you didn’t seem to mind last Saturday.” When Byleth didn’t say anything, Felix pressed the issue. “Well? What is it? You don’t want to kiss me anymore?”

“Felix, I enjoy kissing you, but we don’t have to do it all the time. We’re not a couple, and right now we’re supposed to be practicing.”

Felix looked like she had just punched him again. “So you have been avoiding me. What happened? Was it not good?”

“It was good—very good.”

“But it didn’t mean anything?”

“I don’t know.” No, it did mean something. That was the problem.

“How can you not know?”

“Look, Felix, we fucked. It was good, but can we just be chill about it.”

“Chill? Casual? You want me to be one of your chill casual hookups! As I recall, you treat them even them better than you treat me.”

She raised her hand to cup his face. He was clearly furious, but she was more concerned about the sadness she saw there. “I’m not trying to hurt you, we could—”

But he slapped away her hand, “Don’t fucking touch me,” he said.

Byleth looked stricken, her mask completely slipped.

“Felix, I’m sorry. You’re beautiful and I really enjoy the time I spend with—”

“Stop saying my name in that voice.”

“What voice?”

“The voice like you’re petting a feral animal that you’re about to put down.”

“Look,” she schooled herself into the most even voice she could. “We can hook up again, I’d really like that. But it’s usually something I like to plan for. And right now we had planned to practice.”

“Byleth, I don’t want to _hook up_. I don’t want your body.” Felix said tightly, “I don’t do ‘casual’ relationships the way you do, and I thought you would know that. I mean, I told you stuff.” The way he said the word casual was a slap across the face. How could he assume she was spooked because it was casual and not the opposite?

If it had just been casual, she’d lay him every night. It was that easy.

But it had been more complex than that. It had felt like listening to the strongest most triumphant music, combined with the saddest, most sentimental melody. It had felt like rending apart every stitch of her composure. It had felt like she could topple everything, destroy it all, and create something new in its place. And that was why— That was why—

Why did she had to explain it? Why didn’t he understand that she would need a little space?

He had no faith in her. He thought her low and untrustworthy. But he thought of everyone that way. And that had been okay, until she had started to see how beautiful he was—that he could be caring and not careful, the soft twitches of his mouth reading like a curve-smoothed volumizer, the unbearable sensitivity of his scalp under that dark raven hair.

“If you don’t know what you want? If a casual hookup is what you’re looking for, we should stop this altogether.”

Byleth wanted to lash out at him. To tell him how absurd his judgment was, what a silly mask he was trying to conceal himself behind. She wanted to convince him that casual was good. A mercenary of the heart is adaptable, agile. They don’t get pinned to a wall like a moth to be marveled at in a museum of past loves, decaying despite the chemicals poured over their wings.

She wanted to tell him that his poor, fragile, overly-armored heart was showing. And if he was really that strong—really that fucking powerful—he could take it if she wanted to tell him how fucking pretty he looking in his peacocking teal peacoat and soft black sweater.

“We won’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” Her her voice wasn’t as blank as she needed it to be. The downturn of her lips was betraying her fury.

With Felix in front of her, she was feeling the same intensity she might feel laying back on a soft lawn with her ear full of drones—the sounds coaxing out a climax of emotion.

“Surely, though, we can manage our duet without breaking your heart.” She spoke bitterly. And what about her own heart? A mercenary doesn’t fall in love.

Felix audibly hissed.

She watched him weighing his options. He wanted to run out of the room, without caring what it meant to break his promise to her that he wouldn’t walk out. But she could also tell there there was another impulse, compelling him to stay, to see whatever this was through. She could tell because she felt it too.

“You’re helping me get better at my skills. That’s the whole point. It’s all that I want from you.”

“Agreed. Message me when you’re ready to practice.” she said flatly. And, because she had not made the promise—because it was still within her right to turn on her heel and walk out—that was exactly what she did.

* * *

**30\. but if you don’t, dear, confess**

Felix didn’t want to play at the Open Concert, much less the same old Fugues assigned for his juries. He didn’t want to see Byleth, or even Dorothea who would surely be sitting beside him wondering what had happened between them if Sylvain hadn’t already told her. He was grateful to see his name in the middle of the list, Byleth’s below him, playing the second movement from her fucking _Sonata Pathetique_.

He kept his head down, executing the pieces with only a few mistakes and awkward spots that he noted to fix before the juries. He left when he finished playing and didn’t turn to look back.

He didn’t want to hear Byleth play. He didn’t want anything to do with her.

“Fraldarius looked unhappy,” Byleth said to Seteth as they lingered in their seats once the concert ended.

“In my experience, he always looks like that.” Seteth said, but he didn’t look disappointed. “Although he might be a little preoccupied.”

“With his juries?”

“That, and—well Byleth, I meant to tell you this earlier, but he’s agreed to perform the duet with his father.”

“Now, that is good news.” Byleth was glad Felix stepped up to it like he implied he would. Although, it was cold comfort for whatever was happening between them. The thing that was her fault. The thing that she couldn’t stop making happen between them. “I have to get going myself, have a good night Seteth.”

 _Byleth:_  
_You sounded good at the concert. I wish you stuck around to talk, though._  
[sent 9:30 pm]

 _Byleth:_  
_Well, good luck with your juries._  
[sent 9:45 pm]

There was no reply. In fact, the only message she received from Felix was the cold, hard one telling her that he wouldn’t be showing up to their Mach shift. And Byleth, who had only sought to save them both from the pain, felt something even more brutal than she had anticipated. 

Neglect, she was used to. But the separation, the indifference, the cold lack of that person she had come to know so closely bore through her like a sword. And each day of his silence, she felt him withdrawing the sword inch by inch, little by little, as she slowly bled out around it.

* * *

**31\. and please don’t tell me ‘perhaps, perhaps, perhaps’**

“Hi Professor, you’re looking gorgeous today.”

Byleth squinted her eyes at Sylvain. Skeptical. She’d wrapped her hair into a low loose braid, there was a rip in her buttonup, right at the collar, and she barely had time to put on mascara before rushing out to open Mach alone, after receiving Felix’s laconic text message of “won’t be there to open.”

In the thirty minutes that had passed since opening, she’d realized that the only text message Felix had sent since their fight in the practice room didn’t just mean that he wouldn’t be there to open but that he wouldn’t be there at all. So yes, she was skeptical that she looked anything resembling gorgeous.

“Sylvain,” she said cordially, waiting for him to pass her and go on into the quiet coffeehouse. “Can I get you something?” It was a forlorn formality—none of the staff members ever asked for anything, even when they were just there to visit.

“Actually, _Byleth_ ,” he said emphasizing her name. “I’m covering Felix’s shift tonight, which means we’re working together. So, is there anything that I need to do? Sorry I missed opening.”

Byleth nodded. “No worries, I had a warning. It’s a complete snoozefest in there, just Lindhardt. Dimitri stopped by earlier, but he had another meeting to get to.”

“Well that suits me just fine,” Sylvain said, cheeks rising in one of those radiant, insincere smiles. “Since Felix asked me to cover tonight, I’ve actually been looking forward to the opportunity to talk to you.”

“Where is Felix?” Byleth asked, keeping herself blank.

“Poor guy’s a little behind on his work right now. Needs to study.”

“He can work here.”

“He must have thought it would be too distracting.”

Byleth shrugged. “And there’s something you want to talk to me about?” Her hands itched toward her pack of cigarettes, letting Sylvain bum one off her before lighting up.

“What is Felix to you?”

Byleth’s eyes went wide. This wasn’t a conversation she was prepared to have with her closest friend, who she had to guess must be Claude or Felix himself. How was she supposed to open up to Sylvain of the winks and false smiles?

“Well, he’s an amazing musician…”

Sylvain cracked a sardonic laugh, “Funny, he would say the same thing about you. Music—that’s all you guys care about.”

“He said that you don’t care much about it yourself,” Byleth said coolly. If Sylvain was there to berate her, she was ready to give as good as she got.

“Sometimes he has a short memory. Back when we were kids, Felix played music all the time, emulating Glenn, and I always listened to his music. I loved it. Back then, he made up his own pieces, playing these little themes to some of Glenn’s stories. He used to like stories like that.”

Byleth didn’t bother hiding the smile that was coming to her lips.

“He was so open, you could hear whatever he was thinking when he played. It wasn’t great the way Glenn’s playing was great, world-renowned and all that. But it was Felix, you know. I miss that Felix. When Glenn died, Felix threw himself into playing more than ever, but he stopped making his own pieces. He wanted perfection, playing exactly how others wrote it. You know better than I do what he’s like with that.”

Byleth nodded carefully.

“That’s why I don’t really come to hear him play anymore. If it were the old Felix, I’d be there every time.” Sylvain scratched his head, thinking about his next phrasing. “You know, By,” he said, shortening her name as if they were familiar friends. “When he finally told me about your secret project the night he came back from your date, I was actually excited. I hoped you could help bring that openness back out of him.”

Something felt a little off about Sylvain’s tone, as he slowly transitioned to a live-wire anger.

“So what happened? Why would you ghost him like this?”

Byleth was about to protest, saying that Felix was the one avoiding her. But Sylvain quelled all of her protests with a cold smirk that told her he knew exactly what she was doing. Instead, she resorted to honesty, “I was scared.”

“Byleth,” he said, using her name again. “You had a one-night stand with a man who doesn’t have one-night stands. What you might have been able to compartmentalize as a one-time thing is eating him up—it has been for the past week. It probably is right now. And you don’t even have the guts to talk it out with him. Are you proud? I’ll tell you this, if it devours him and closes him up for good, I will never forgive you.”

Byleth buried her head into her elbows.

“Sylvain,” she groaned. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t want it to be like this."

“Oh goddess, you’re really just that bad at this, aren’t you?”

“I wanted to be okay with Felix and I… I got scared and I just blundered the whole thing.”

“Do you—Do you love him then?”

Byleth deflected, like the coward Felix had called her right before she punched him. “You can and should blame me for everything. If you want you can fight me?”

“Fight you? Who the hell do you think I am? Felix? He might want to fight you, I guess.”

Sylvain breathed deeply, any trace of a smile practically dripping off his face.

“Wow, this is relatable. Look Byleth, I don’t blame you exactly. I’ll admit, everything in me wanted to march right down here and tell you that, ‘not knowing what you want doesn’t give you the right to hurt other people.’ Those were Felix’s words by the way—he’s a little more insightful than you might give him credit for. Anyway, I was all ready to yell about how fitting it is that everyone calls you frigid.” He brushed his hair back and paused, letting Byleth hang there for a moment. 

“But the irony wasn’t lost on me, you know. I’m sure there are armies of girls that I’ve done this very thing to. And their friends probably wish they could give this talk to me. But I would have thought that you would see that Felix is worth a lot more than that.”

“I do see that,” Byleth squeaked out.

“And I believe you.” When Byleth looked at him in relief, he felt the need to add, “I want Felix to be happy, and he’s not right now.”

“He wouldn’t talk to me even if I tried. What am I gonna do?” Byleth felt her voice quaking. She couldn’t bear to see if Sylvain had noticed.

“Well you’re not going to lead him on. Because if you do that, I really will hurt you. So if that’s what you’re doing, call off your stupid project and leave him alone.”

“And if that’s not what I want?”

“Well, if you feel something more about it. Then I’d say get drunk and tell him how you feel.”

“He’s going to lash out at me.”

“You brought that on yourself. You could have just been honest with him in the first place. Just don’t punch him again.” He scratched at his hair, still giving her that merciless look he seemed to reserve for her alone. Then, he pulled another cigarette from her pack without asking. “Or you could just take it slow and careful, that’s probably the wisest. But love-him-and-leave-him like you did, and you’re going to lose him. Hell, we all might lose him.”

“Can you make him talk to me?”

“Only if you prove to me you really care.” Then, Sylvain smiled a real, genuine smile. “Prove it and I can make him see you. I don’t know about talking though, that’s up to him.”

Byleth laughed, feeling a little relieved. “I can’t believe you came here to talk to me about your best friend’s feelings.”

“You’re lucky it was me and not Ingrid. She’s ready to kick your ass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I decided to make Byleth and Felix experienced (so they would have to *choose* each other), I had no idea they would have so much baggage. Sorry about that.
> 
> Anyway, maybe you need this escapism as much as I do right now. Take care!


	6. Glory: Show Me Your Teeth, I'll Show Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- Shameless inebriation  
> \- Ghosts passing in the night  
> \- Piano improvisation makeouts  
> \- Tempo puns  
> \- Time to DTR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were a number of loose ends to tie up for the last chapter, and I wanted to do them justice. Meaning, I had to make the agonizing decision to split up what I had for the final part and post them in two chapters. This will break the scheme a little bit. 
> 
> There will be one more chapter after this. Byleth and Felix will take an encore, and Jeralt and Rodrigue will be there.
> 
> If you want to keep up with the music (played and quoted), I made a [spotify playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57EBQl19oaRDIEXm4LwPCJ?si=-37XS5CVShalMfhppP98mw).

**32\. if you stop staring straight through me**

It would have taken a horde of giant toxin-breathing scaly-armored lizards to keep Byleth from wasting herself every evening of that weekend. She took it as permission that Hapi and Balthus were there in Pub Abyss with her, matching her rounds.

Sober Byleth might have called them enablers, as Hapi toasted Byleth’s frown before talking shit about the physics faculty, and Balthus nodded sagely before boasting about how many he could take in a fight. Drunk Byleth, however, considered them the most supportive of friends.

Not wanting to foot the bill for her favorite bourbons, Byleth drank Irish whiskey on the rocks. The cheap booze burn helped her feel at home in her skin. Her customarily stiff posture discarded, she slunk low into the barstool. For hours she could pretend she had never left the pubs of her father. Now, if only Pub Abyss had a shitty spinet in the corner with cracked and chipped keys and wires bent shockingly out of tune.

They shot the shit about professors, teaching, undergrad mishaps, papers. Relationships and love didn’t factor into it at all. And whenever Byleth would make it a double, Hapi might ask “Hey what gives?” about Byleth shoveling herself further into her cups. But she always accepted it when Byleth brushed it off, citing the stresses and responsibilities they all felt about teaching and school.

Being drunk was a comfort. But being drunk was also a liability. And when nobody was watching, Byleth would manage to get her phone out and type up some really stupid things. It might have been safer to send her messages to Claude, maybe Sylvain, or even literally anyone else. Byleth was sick of seeking safety, though. It was never enough consolation for what she sacrificed to attain it. So she sent her drunken messages to Felix.

 _Byleth:  
I know you don’t care about this, so don’t bother about how little you care. But I’ve had a really crap day._  
[sent 9:35 pm]

 _Professor Rhea has been on my case about turning my thesis into an ethnography instead of a meta-review. Which means I’d have to talk to people, interview people._  
[sent 9:36 pm]

 _Ethnographers work in “the field”. The only “field” I work in is the decrepit social cesspool that is Mach Coffeehouse. I could do an ethnography of Mach, but how in the hell am I supposed to turn who-slept-with-whom and whose-special-private-parts-inspired-whose-song-lyrics into qualitative metrics?_  
[sent 9:38 pm]

 _Don’t answer that._  
[sent 9:38 pm]

 _Not that you would anyway._  
[sent 9:39 pm]

 _These should be next year’s problems, but Rhea is acting like I have to decide everything right now. She’s on about drafting my lit review, and I don’t even know what period of music I’m studying._  
[sent 9:50 pm]

 _Rhea says contemporary analysis gets the grant money (hence the ethnography). What if she makes me interview all of my dad’s musician friends? Like a kid’s school project? I’d be so embarrassed._  
[sent 9:53 pm]

 _Don’t act like you wouldn’t hate that too._  
[sent 9:55 pm]

 _I think she somehow got word that I wanted to compose. She’s been relentlessly pressing the research PHD. I think she’s trying to break me._  
[sent 10:03 pm]

 _On top of that, Professor Hanneman has been on my case about professionalism with the students. So I can’t even talk to Claude lately!_  
[sent 10:07 pm]

 _And I’m not—I swear—I’m not being especially unprofessional. (You should see Balthus with his students!) But Hanneman doesn’t get it because he’s ancient and only cares about his research._  
[sent 10:07 pm]

 _Also—get this. I saw my crush (you know this guy Felix who I used to be close with?) in the dining hall today and all of his friends waved to me. His well-mannered blond friend (who he inexplicably refers to as a Boar) even came to invite me over. But when I looked into his eyes to see if it was okay, he just looked right through me like I didn’t exist._  
[sent 10:20 pm]

 _You looked terrible by the way. You could use some sleep._  
[sent 10:23 pm]

Another night, another drink. Or, well, drinks—plural. Byleth sipped gin because it was clear, bitter, and it felt like it could burn her out.

Everything was showing on her face—the strain, the heartbreak. Even Balthus, who was usually too narcissistic to care, had noticed Byleth’s expressions.

He kept it easy though. He laughed, they took a shot, and Byleth sent Felix a text message. And once she started, she couldn’t stop.

 _Byleth:  
I was having a great day today— spending it with some other people you don’t like at Noble Tea (and yes I count myself among that vast coterie of people Felix Fraldarius doesn’t like)._   
[sent 9:57 pm]

 _And Ingrid has to come up to us. She gives me all these calculated looks like she was sizing up which of us would win in a fight. And I’m thinking I’m pretty sure it would be me. That is, until she drops your name all casually, saying she had dinner plans with you, and it was like the lowest blow, critical hit._  
[sent 10:12 pm]

 _And all of a sudden my day was shit._  
[sent 10:12 pm]

 _Even though Edelgard bought me sorbet and set aside shop talk for all of thirty minutes while we ate._  
[sent 10:13 pm]

 _Dad asks me why don’t I just drop out? And it’s getting difficult to find reasons to stay. It’s not like academia’s the fucking honey pot. I’ve already reached the upper limits of my contractual stipend, and I’m still pretty sure I could be doing a lot better._  
[sent 10:24 pm]

 _I could be traveling and playing music. I could be writing songs for some band. I mean not the words, obviously, but all the rest—and it would be really good._  
[sent 10:25 pm]

 _I’m lukewarm about all those options. But at least luke-warm is better than frigid—am I right?_  
[sent 10:26 pm]

 _Don’t answer that._  
[sent 10:26 pm]

 _Not like you were going to._  
[sent 10:27 pm]

 _I know you think I don’t know what I want. But I do. Right now, though, what I want is so inaccessible. And that annoys the fuck out of me, but it’s also my fault so…_  
[sent 10:45 pm]

 _I think, though, that if the thing I wanted was accessible, then it would make all of this worth it—Rhea’s pushiness and Hanneman’s scolding. I could brush it all off and feel good without having to down six bottles of Jamo a night._  
[sent 10:50 pm]

 _And I’ll level with you, even more, Felix. I don’t think you’re happy being so inaccessible, either. I don’t think this is what you want._  
[sent 11:00 pm]

 _(Although I did sneak into that service at the university chapel this morning to listen to you play the organ, and that was really cool)._  
[sent 11:01 pm]

 _And if you were happy, maybe I could let it go. I would hook up with someone else, stop texting you novel-length confessions that you probably hate, stop writing you compositions that you’ll probably never play._  
[sent 11:02 pm]

 _But you don’t seem happy and it’s making it impossible for me to move on._  
[sent 11:02 pm]

 _You said you don’t want my body, well here are my fucking thoughts and feelings, Felix. Take them how you will._  
[sent 11:03 pm]

_Felix:  
Don’t hook up with someone else or I’ll cut you both down_  
[sent 11:07 pm]

 _And keep writing music- it’s good for you_  
[sent 11:08 pm]

* * *

**33\. and i could give you my apologies**

Byleth was so hungover on Monday, she barely made it out to her 10 am graduate seminar. Teaching at noon, she took the easy way out, splitting the class into two groups for a debate. She added fuel to the exercise by assigning Lorenz against Claude as the group leaders. She wondered if they noticed that they were doing all the teaching for her.

Claude loitered by her desk when the class period ended, but she waved him off, promising she’d explain everything the next time she saw him. She sat at the desk with her phone out, gulping water to quell the hangover’s wrath.

Felix had texted her back for the first time last night, but she didn’t know what it meant. Would he continue to respond to her?

 _Can we talk?_ Byleth sent the message, the combination of headache and anticipation making her want to rush home and crawl into bed.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for his less than satisfying response to return.

 _Felix:  
Busy._  
[sent 1:17 pm]

She thought about sending him more of her heartfelt messages to see if they would do any good. But she needed to drink for those, and she really couldn’t afford another hangover.

Byleth tried again the next day.

 _Can we practice?_ She sent him in the mid-morning. This time it was only a few minutes before Felix responded.

 _Felix:  
Have to work on curriculum stuff._  
[sent 11:07 pm]

It thawed her heart slightly that he thought it worth explaining.

When Byleth wasn’t at the Open Concert that night, Felix played Chopin for no one. The loss was more of a blow than he could have expected. He left once the concert was finished and prolonged his walk home by circling the quad a few times.

There was always tomorrow. He’d hit the practice rooms at the same time that he and Byleth used to practice together. She wasn’t as habit-driven as he was. Nonetheless, he thought that if she was looking for him, she would try to find him that way.

Say Byleth did show up to the practice room, though. He had no idea what he should do. Was he ready to stifle his pride?

Felix found out the next day that he had been correct to assume Byleth would be in the practice room. She was already practicing when he arrived, and his inner struggle was no less confused.

He opted for the room next to Byleth’s and began playing a new piece. It was a Rachmaninoff Etude that diverged from his usual repertoire. It invited a certain amount of clockwork movement, while also forcing a sense of agitation during the bridges. He thought Byleth would like it, after all, it reminded him of her.

He had been playing for almost half an hour before his phone vibrated against his leg.

 _Byleth:  
Your Rachmaninoff prelude could use work but you’re definitely getting there._  
[sent 12:03 pm]

She must be out in the hallway if she could hear him clearly. This was his third run-through, and he was grateful that she hadn’t been able to hear the first one very well—it had been very rough. He traced a tough section with his right hand, before deciding on texting back, _Is that supposed to be a compliment?_

 _Byleth:  
You need to be a little more erratic. Give it some jittery nervous energy._  
[sent 12:08 pm]

 _Count it out, then hesitate a moment before starting back in._  
[sent 12:08 pm]

He imagined her leaning her shoulders against the other side of the door, fretting down into her phone as she typed. He wanted to burst from the door, take her in his arms, press his face into her neck. Instead, he typed back a simple, _Thanks_.

He played his right and left hand separately, getting the agitated notes under his fingers. It must have been at least an hour since his last message to Byleth when he received another.

 _Byleth:  
You know, if you miss playing Rach we could play it together._  
[sent 1:04 pm]

Was she still out there, then? Had she been listening to him the whole time?

This time, he really did get up to open the door, hoping to see her breezy green hair. But no one was out there. She had already left, probably a long time ago. Looking into the empty hall, he wrote back, _Perhaps,_ and then, _Another time though_.

That was more than Byleth had hoped for. It was, on the other hand, the best that Felix had to offer.

Byleth was spending her Wednesday evening nursing a beer in Pub Abyss while grading. It wasn’t hard liquor—she still had to teach the next day. She drank slowly enough to stay on the more polite side of buzzed.

She laughed as the bartender Catherine got into a one-upping fight with one of the customers about the origin of certain kickboxing techniques. She took a certain solace from Shamir, the chemistry PHD, whom she knew only tangentially and who was also grading papers sitting two seats down from her. This distant camaraderie was exactly what Byleth had been used to her whole life, and it poured a certain warmth, a foamy beery warmth, into the sad rips and tears left behind by her verbal spars with Felix.

Catherine came over and without asking squeezed an orange slice into Byleth’s mostly full wheat beer.

“Try it like this. I think you’ll like it.” She gave Byleth the patronizing half-smile that all the clientele knew to be affection. Byleth smiled softly back. “Hey, look at that, you can smile.” Catherine joked. “Is that your phone buzzing?” she asked, looking at where Byleth had set her phone face down on the wooden bartop. Sure enough, it was.

 _Felix:  
Dorothea and Yuri asked me to play a few songs for their set_  
[sent 7:15 pm]

Byleth took a big gulp of the beer. The citrus was pleasant, she had to give Catherine that. The text message, on the other half, was just confusing. Why was he telling her this? Was there something specific that he wanted her to say?

Byleth took her time thinking about her response, as she nursed her beer and pretended to focus on grading Ignatz’s exam essay, which was less essay-text and more a giant doodle of a dragon that spanned from the margin of the page into the blank space in the bottom.

Finally, she responded with the only thing that made sense to ask: _Are you doing it?_

 _Felix:  
I said no_  
[sent 7:25 pm]

Well, why didn’t he lead with that? She tallied Ignatz’s score to write it on the front of the paper. The simple fractions tripped her up a little bit. Maybe she was more buzzed than she had thought. _Why?_ She typed back.

 _Felix:  
Busy_  
[sent 7:18 pm]

 _And Yuri seems like a tool_  
[sent 7:20 pm]

Petty jealousy, Byleth thought as she signaled Catherine for the check. Now that was something she could work with. She notarized the check, writing a big “Thank You” to Catherine, and walked home with only half her exams graded. She would have to hustle to finish them in the morning.

Byleth knew better than to look forward to her Mach shift on Thursday, but that just meant that the day dragged on too long. When she was done with her tasks at 2 pm, it didn’t enter her mind to work on research. She wouldn’t be able to focus on it anyway.

And of course, when she descended the stairs of the music department, she could tell that she wasn’t the only one resorting to the practice rooms.

 _I hear you playing. The Chopin sounds excellent._ She typed the message to Felix before she could give herself a chance to back out.

 _Felix:  
No need to butter me up_  
[sent 2:25 pm]

Byleth had to disagree. She had every need to butter him up. Well, she might as well keep going until she couldn’t get a response from him: _I learned the fingering for the Glory._

 _Felix:_  
_I heard, in the practice room yesterday_  
[sent 2:34 pm]

 _Still a long way to go though_  
[sent 2:31 pm]

She felt a thrill. If there was a long way to go, then he wasn’t calling it off. It was still a possibility. And if they dueted again, maybe there were other things they would do again too.

_Do you want to try it out?_

After she sent the text she hid the phone away so that she wouldn’t check it during her practice. It was a good thing too because he didn’t respond.

She tried again, after cleaning up a section of the new Ravel piece she had taken up as inspiration for her own Prelude.

_By the way, how did your juries go?_

_Felix:  
Fine_  
[sent 3:15 pm]

He had left the practice room by that time, and Byleth took that to be the end of his good graces.

When it came time to head to Mach Coffeehouse, Byleth almost let herself hope that Felix would be back at their shift. That hope, however, sank low when she came up to the porch and saw Dimitri. He was jovially early and ready to help her open, and she could not have been more bitter about it.

Once she and Dimitri finished opening, she left him studying at the table to have a smoke outside. Her fingers moved almost automatically over her phone, falling into the brutal sparring that her relationship with Felix had become.

 _Are you ever going to come back to your shift?_ She asked. She wished it came off with the tone of an authoritative manager, but she knew that it would just sound sullen and needy.

 _Felix:  
I sent the Boar there to keep you company_  
[sent 8:18 pm]

Byleth’s eyes narrowed. She fantasized about smashing her fist upside Felix’s head again. Unlike the majority of her other Felix-based fantasies that just left her with the ache of longing, this one was very satisfying. She threw in a second punch to the stomach, his rye-colored eyes flying wide with shock as he doubled over at the stomach.

 _It’s not his company that I want_ , she typed back as the image of gut-punched Felix faded from her mind. It left her feeling a little guilty. After all, that gut-punched look was too similar to the actual look he wore when she walked out of the practice room that day.

 _Felix:  
I’ll be there next week_  
[sent 8:25 pm]

 _I have to be_  
[sent 8:25 pm]

Now that was something. He would have to see her then. They might even have to talk. And yet, that aching dissatisfaction was gnawing at her. They were texting so much more now, but she still wondered if it wasn’t about time to give up and move on.

When Friday came around, Felix didn’t know what to do with himself. There was a Mach show that night. If he went, it would be just to invite distraction. And with no big afterparty planned, he’d have to tag along with Sylvain to some too small, too intimate gathering, that was destined to grow too awkward, as everyone got too drunk.

Or, he could ask Ingrid to watch a movie with him. She had been a bit warmer to him since he had managed to show up to her rugby game last weekend.

He texted Ingrid to set it up. They would skip Mach altogether and meet in Ingrid’s apartment for the movie. It was a good plan. Now, he just had to kill time until then. He headed to the practice rooms, settling to work on the duet that Rodrigue had picked.

 _Byleth:  
Is that Vivaldi?_  
[sent 6:05 pm]

Felix decided not to answer this. She was prying. And he felt sure Dean Seteth would have already told her he was doing the damned duet with Rodrigue.

Once he stepped out of his practice room, he heard Byleth’s style written all over the notes being played in the room at the far end of the hall, the one with the wiggly stool. Although he knew she would be practicing, otherwise how would she have known about the Vivaldi, it still froze him in place to hear her play.

Felix stood outside of her door, listening, but he didn’t recognize the piece. It was pretty, uncomplicated, forceful, and it cut straight to the heart. Felix imagined a duel between two close friends. Swords in hand, they circled each other, both with sad eyes, both with shuttered faces, both reluctant, even as one of them said, _no need for chit-chat, come at me_. Felix sunk to the floor, his back against the wall and his head close to the crack of the doorjamb to hear better.

Byleth paused. The wiggly stool creaked as if she bent over it, perhaps to write something. He longed to be in there with her, but that seemed like a bad idea.

 _What are you playing?_ Felix texted. Listening closely, he could hear her phone make an obnoxious buzz against the wood of the piano. Would she answer right away? He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

 _Byleth:  
Untitled piece, student composer._  
[sent 6:36 pm]

‘Student composer’ was a cute euphemism. If they weren’t fighting, he wondered, would she feel comfortable telling him that it was her own composition? He couldn’t blame her from obscuring that detail either. He wrote back, _Tell the ‘student composer’ that it’ll work better if they just do a key change for that middle section and use an augmented minor inversion._

 _Byleth:  
Thanks, I’ll pass on your message._  
[sent 6:37 pm]

Felix continued listening outside the door. His butt went numb and his head crooked awkwardly in a way that would probably ache the next day. And still, he wanted to hang onto every note that Byleth was writing. So he sat there without complaint until he heard her packing up, and then he fled.

* * *

**34\. by handing over all the olive trees**

Felix had a dream about Byleth, and in his dream, she wasn’t evil or cruel at all. She was just caring, sweet, only human. She was beautiful, soft, warm. He knew because in this dream they did unspeakable things. It felt so good—it was so good—until he woke up and realized she wasn’t there.

He almost had his phone out to text her, _Come over here_. Would she come if he did? He almost trusted her not to reject him this time. He almost trusted her to be there for him. He deleted the message and let sleep take him over again. It had been three weeks since their date—practically an eternity. That should be ample time to forget about it, right?

Byleth’s fingers danced on the surface of the phone as if she were playing a frantic etude. It was the type of etude she wanted to play all over Felix’s skin, leaving pissed off bruises with each keystroke, to teach him not to ever give her the silent treatment.

Was it within his right to ask her not to see anyone else? Was it within her right to forget about him and end it all? One hookup with someone else would piss him off for good. End everything. They would stop messaging each other. She would find somewhere else to practice. She would see other easier people. He would yell at other softer people.

It almost sounded appealing until Byleth thought of the warm look in his eyes that night—the look that wanted to hold and consumes every inch of her. She settled on messaging him yet again, _Are you going to the Mach show tonight?_

There, sent, but something in the back of her mind knew this would be their last chance. A mercenary knows to move along when a gig isn’t paying.

Then, almost immediately, her phone twitched in her hand.

 _Felix:  
No, busy_  
[sent 10:20 am]

 _But I might go to the afterparty_  
[sent 10:20 am]

Byleth stared at the screen, trying to unravel the riddle of the laconic pianist on the other side. _Would it make you leave if I was there too?_ she typed back.

 _Felix:  
I don’t care what you do_  
[sent 10:24 am]

That wasn’t a no.

Byleth made her way to the practice rooms, deciding to try something new. Her prediction was correct, Felix was indeed in the practice room, working on the Vivaldi he still hadn’t admitted to her that he was learning.

She chose the room next to his because if he could do it, she could too. She opened her neglected copy of _The Well-Tempered Clavier_ , not caring exactly which fugue she landed on, as long as it was toward the center of the book where the more difficult keys were.

Then, she began sight-reading, knowing that her fingers were landing too loudly and inaccurately, too erratically and obnoxiously. She kept busting into the keys, until—

 _Felix:  
Is that you playing Bach in practice room 4?_  
[sent 4:35 pm]

 _It sounds terrible_  
[sent 4:36 pm]

Byleth amped it up, playing louder and faster. If she had to guess, she was landing the notes at a 63 percent success rate.

 _Felix:  
Are you playing louder now?_  
[sent 4:37 pm]

 _Why are you playing that monstrosity so loudly?_  
[sent 4:38 pm]

Felix heard the pianist pause. He wondered if he had scared her into stopping.

The silence in the other room pressed him. For just a moment, he had to consider everything he had been putting Byleth through—not answering her, not validating the way she was trying to open up to him, and now he was openly insulting her playing.

He had been mostly sure that Byleth’s terrible Bach was a farce. But what if it wasn’t? What if she was just this broken? She was sure as hell stronger than he was, he realized. If he had been reaching out to a brick wall as long as she had been, he didn’t know how he would react. Stop, withdraw, only play, only practice, only skill.

Then his phone vibrated in his hand.

 _Byleth:  
Are you going to come show me how it’s done?_  
[sent 4:44 pm]

A direct challenge and one that he wanted so badly. How could he say no?

Besides, he didn’t want the party that night to be the first time he saw her after weeks of avoidance.

With her hand on the Boar’s shoulder, with Claude successfully coaxing a big smile from her lips, with Sylvain’s too-familiar greetings, with Edelgard obsessively raising questions for her judgment, with her being bosom pals with Annette talking about how emotionally stunted Felix was, with Hubert watching them from the shadows knowing that something was going on between them, and with him Felix just being there to scowl at her.

Because by now he was realizing that he had hurt her back. Because they hadn’t made up yet. Because he’d gotten his baby feelings hurt and couldn’t even explain it to her. No, that’s not how he wanted the weekend to go at all.

He put his hand on the doorknob and pulled it aggressively, not giving himself the chance to back down.

Byleth’s head snapped to the door like an exotic owl. Her green eyes were huge and they suddenly seemed so very—kind?

“It’s you,” the words startled from her lips. Felix was standing in the doorway. Tendrils of his hair were teased out of his messy bun from walking in the wind outside. A black turtleneck hugged his chest up to his neck. The ribbing looked so soft, little ridges that Byleth wanted to dig her fingernails into. Boots for the cold reshaped his already fit legs. And those hard-caramel eyes already singeing her.

All through that year, Byleth had been reprimanding herself for not knowing what she wanted. Now one of those things—one of those certain, intense, feelings things was standing right in front of her. And it was more than desire, it was—

“You’re staring at me,” he said sharply, flushing a bright rose madder that couldn’t be confused for wind chill.

“I didn’t expect you to actually come in.” Now that she had stopped playing, Byleth’s hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. She twisted them nervously in her lap.

“I couldn’t stand you playing so horribly.” He crossed the room and placed his teal coat and music portfolio in the folding chair.

“I admit, it’s not my forte.” She scooted over on the stool as she noticed Felix’s intention to sit next to her.

“You were purposefully playing like shit.” Byleth just shrugged, but a small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. “If you wanted to hear some Bach, you could have just asked.” He rested his hands on the keys.

“And suffer a one-word response—or worse, no response at all—while the best pianist in the school avoids me. I have feelings too, you know.”

“I know,” he said. For a moment, he felt that same stabbing realization of his own cruelty that had surfaced just a few minutes ago. “If you had asked me to play Bach for you, though, I might have.” Byleth scowled at him.

“Well, are you going to play or not?” She asked, yielding more of the stool by perching on the edge.

Felix smiled before training his eyes onto the sheet music and beginning the piece.

She watched him play closely, and he let her stare. She watched his hands on the keys, every stroke timed and purposeful. Then his face, the intense look of focus and careful concentration, his hair dripping across his jaw. She longed to take down the bun, run her hands through the hair, bring his face to hers, and relive all the tender and lustful moments that had scared her so much that night three weeks ago.

Felix no longer sounded like a music box, a creature made of clockwork and flesh. There were now soft punctuations to his playing. He added cadences to the grace notes. He was learning to hear his own rhythm, as he delayed a whispering ornament just for effect. Byleth realized how far he’d come, and her throat felt tight.

When he finished, she didn’t know what to say. They were still too fragile for her to kiss his cheek to let him know how she felt. Would that even be something he wanted?

He started flipping through her _Well-Tempered Clavier_ , looking for another piece to play. Before he could find one, though, she whimsically grabbed the book out of his hands.

“What would you play” she began sweetly, lest he interpret this as another combative situation, “if you had nothing in front of you?”

“You would be surprised how much Bach I have memorized.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But not something you memorized, just something else.”

“Isn’t it your dream to compose?” he asked, looking frustrated. “Not mine.”

“Is that so?” she asked, remembering her conversation with Sylvain. Felix used to make up his own themes all the time.

He humphed. The game where he had the upper hand was over. And she was, perhaps unfairly, asking him to expose himself without making herself vulnerable too. How to fix that little blunder before it became a big mess all over again?

“I’ll do it too,” she said quickly. When he still didn’t acquiesce, “I’ll do it first?”

“You’ll do it with me,” he said decisively.

“Oh, okay. I’m not sure how, though.” Improvising was one thing. Byleth was even somewhat experienced with band jamming. But two people with such different styles improvising on one piano?

“Don’t you play using your feelings? I’ll start and you join in when you feel something.”

She bit her treacherous tongue to keep it from stumbling. It wanted to yell at him about mocking her feelings. It wanted to insult his stilted playing. It wanted to threaten him with sweet nothings like _I always feel something when I’m with you_.

Felix placed his hands on the upper register and softly traced out a melody. The key, they discovered, was C minor. The tone of the melody sounded more like something Byleth would play than Felix himself. Moody, but with a stilted tempo—too stilted for what she needed it to be—and soft so soft. She would already be striking the chords hard by now. And that was when she realized that she knew what to play, and it was time for her to come in.

He repeated the melody, perhaps trying not to forget it, and she added in one of her tremoring bases. The soft bass flickered in an iridescent way, even as it stretched her hand. It altered the rhythm, but not the pattern of the notes. And Felix was finding it now, the rhythm that could swell and flex and pull its listener along.

That was as far as they got. Two hands improvising, his right and her left, tremoring and swelling their way into something completely new.

Felix was the first to take his hands off the keys, and Byleth tried to replace his right hand with her own, fearful that here again, they would find themselves walking away from each other. She worried that at any moment now she would hear him leaving the room, and they would never be able to stop leaving each other. And maybe she would deserve it because she wanted to compose for him, but here she was failing to trace out the melody he laid down for her.

She found herself sketching more of a harmony, trying to find the tone he had started. That is, until she became completely distracted by Felix’s lips pressing soft kisses along her jaw. His left hand strummed the curve of her neck. His right hand, which had left the keys and floundered for a moment while it found its place in his desires, and finally moved to turn her chin toward him. He hoped her body would soon follow.

The part of his brain that had vowed he could listen to her play forever was disgusted by the part of his brain that leaped for joy when her hand left the keys. She wrapped her fingers in his hair and drove his head forward to press his lips to hers.

They kissed like two people who had been digging for years and years before finally finding a locked treasure chest in an unmarked spot. They kissed like teenagers who didn’t know how to kiss, biting and missing and sloppy. And then like careful adults who suddenly learned to overthink every locking of the lips, every darting of the tongue.

And it was this too much thinking instinct that pulled them apart and forced them to consider what they were doing and what they wanted.

“Sylvain said,” Felix began, his voice feeling thick and heavy, “that you’ve been lovesick for me.”

“Sylvain had to tell you that? Not all the messages I’ve been sending you?” Byleth’s tone was biting, but her eyes were still so kind for him.

Felix smiled, a little tension going out of the tight space between his eyes. “I guess that was a give away too. And Sylvain said that you’ve batted away every guy who’s come near you in the past weeks.”

“I guess so.” It figured that Sylvain had been watching her closely. “I’m glad to know that it worked. Felix, what happened three weeks ago—it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. I mean, not the sex! But after…”

“I know that I think.”

“I didn’t mean for you to feel abandoned after we…”

“Fucked.” His face was downcast when he said it. And, while it was true that their desires had translated onto their bodies, it hurt to hear him abdicate their experience to that simple meeting of bodies.

“It was more than that,” he raised his head, eyes hopeful in that challenging way, and both of their minds connected the same dots. “We talked, we…” Flouresced like fireflies in the night. Boned deeper than she’d ever boned before. Played the most beautiful boat song she could ever dream of. Held each other tenderly and whispered proclamations of eternity into each other’s ears. Made love. “And I didn’t mean to make you think you were just something casual to me. The way I feel about you is anything but casual.”

“Okay, okay.” He said. He breathed one of his long steadying breaths through his nose. “My turn, then. I have been an ass. I’m sorry I haven’t responded to anything you’ve said and have avoided you.”

“You did respond to some of it.”

“Yeah, but not really,” he looked like he was going to say something else but just left it at that.

“Okay,” Byleth said wondering how to move this along. She was sick of talking. She either wanted to play their duet or get back to kissing him.

The answer to this transition, it turned out, was very easy. She grabbed his hair, softer this time, more gentle, and brought his lips back to hers. Every movement was accompanied by a shift to bring his body closer to hers. Her other hand began searching out the contours of his sweater.

He pushed against her as much as he could, his hand tracing down her back to feel her through her shirt. The narrow stool creaked, the pushing wasn’t enough. Byleth slipped and her elbow hit the piano keys, in a startling crash of noise.

“This isn’t really the place is it?” Felix asked gently, his lips whispering against her jaw.

“It’s my favorite place.”

“Well, mine too,” she could feel him smiling like a tiny knife cutting an impression into her jaw. “But I want to be with you now. More than this. I want to make you cry out, like last time. And the idea of Seteth hearing outside the door will make it—”

“Okay, enough, enough, where do you want to go?”

“Your apartment.” He kept his voice from begging her to let him in. This time to stay the night—no, more than a night. He wanted her to make a place for him in her life, hang his music box of a heart on the walls. Didn’t she see how easy it could be if she just let him in? “Unless you want Sylvain listening outside the door instead.”

“Come on, then,” she said, holding up his teal peacoat for him to slip into. He did the same in turn, helping her bundle into the long soft black coat and belt it around her waist.

He allowed his hair to continue tumbling down over his shoulders where she had pulled it down—after all, she would just do it again once they were inside her apartment.

She gently stretched her soft fur-trimmed toboggan over his head, and he wrapped his thick woolen scarf around her neck. It was so thick it covered past her chin to her bottom lip. Up the stairs of the music department and through the doors into the cool night, she held his hand.

* * *

**35\. but I get all bold with every smile**

When they entered Byleth’s apartment, there was no doubt that they would be skipping that party that night.

Felix shifted his eyes around the apartment, taking in the electric keyboard against the wall, the small desk covered in manila folders, paper drafts, and stacks of binder-clipped essays waiting to be graded. She had a bookshelf full of research texts, the majority of them owned by the University library, and a whole row of sheet music and scores and binders.

While he looked, Byleth was taking her coat off and folding his scarf. She set them both on the back of an armchair. Felix followed suit, draping his coat over hers and pulling off her hat. He felt his hair framing his face, the ends settling down around his shoulders.

“Can I, um, get you some water? Or, I guess it’s about five, I could make us cocktails.” Byleth looked suddenly awkward, slipping into the mode of a host, as opposed to a lover.

“No need.” Felix threaded his hand under Byleth’s hair to touch the back of her neck. He could feel her press against his hand, already melting into him. They could fix it. They could repair it all, and they would enjoy doing it.

He put his other hand on her shoulder and pushed her against the door. He heard her breath hitch. When he pressed against her, her body responded, melding against his like fluid. He kissed her lips but pulled away, even as her mouth opened for him. He trailed blistering kisses down her jaw, over her chin, and down her neck, settling into that sensitive pulse space where her firm jaw connected to her neck. His open-mouthed kissing pressed her more firmly into the door, as his knee slipped between hers, pinning her, pressing her.

She murmured something in his ear, one hand fisted in his hair, the other pulling up on the bottom hem of his sweater, digging her blunted and piano-maintained nails into the soft inch of skin she had revealed of his back.

“What was that?” he asked, pulling his face from her neck.

“I said, I missed you.” He smiled, covering her lips with his own.

“I know,” he said before nipping her lower lip. Her hand moved upward under his shirt, finding and tracing his spine. “Me too,” he said, and he pulled her away from the door with both hands to press her against him.

“My room’s through that door,” she said assuming he would figure it out since she was too occupied to point in the right direction.

“What about it?” he asked smirking against her cheek.

“Well…” she trailed out the word as he bit a little harder on her neck. “I am about to strip you down.”

“You are?”

“Starting with this soft sweater of yours.” He shuddered at her hand, now tracing its way up to his shoulders.

“And?” He asked, searching to find an opening to her skin. He pulled her sweater up her waist.

“And we might as well be comfortable,” she said, annoyed that she had to keep spelling it out. He liked the way her eyes narrowed and her fingers pinched him when she was annoyed.

He stepped back from her in a slow lingering way that drove them both crazy, and he looked her up and down.

He wanted to see the rest of her apartment, the place where she lived and slept and escaped from all the rest. But he was still aware that he was a guest. She would have to keep letting him in if she wanted to. If he pressed her too quickly, would she push him away again?

But Byleth had nothing to wait for. She had her mind made, her priorities straight. She was going all in, and it would be sweet. She grabbed Felix’s hand and pulled him behind her, opening the door and scattering books from her bed, as they fell neglected to the floor.

Felix gave the room one second to make an impression on him. Very bare. A small mess of fashion possessions, just the same things he always saw her wear. And a small bed. He pressed her onto the bed, glad to feel both of them writhing and ready to wriggle from their clothes.

Now that she had let him in, Felix had one goal, and it was to make her want to keep him. Now that he was talking to her again, Byleth had one goal, and it was to make him want to stay.

He led the dance. Pressing her against the bed, he undid her jeans and pulled them off her. And then he began working on her body. He pressed her nerves like he would a musical instrument, careful and precise.

“Damn your perfect tempo Felix, this isn’t a march,” Byleth howled, as his fingers moved inside her. Despite it not being a march, Felix could still make out a light line of sweat at her hairline. “Use the off-beat and syncop—”

But she couldn’t even get the word out all the way before Felix understood what she was saying. He found the rightly syncopated rhythm for his hand pushing inside her.

“Ohh,” her eyes were wide now and she was smiling around her wide grin.

Felix was glad she was pleased, but she could be so damn commanding. He relieved some of his frustration by moving his mouth from between her legs to the soft skin of her inner thigh and gave her a wide-mouthed bite.

“Uhhh.” To his surprise that did it. He could feel her walls shuddering and falling around his fingers.

“You,” she said, using her abdominals to lift her body, her arms raising to find a way to pull on his hips. “You should come here.”

He raised himself to bring his face close to hers, teasing her with soft kisses. He was going to take this opportunity to slow things down and tease her until she forgot that she could boss him around.

If he did it right, he thought desperately, as his nimble fingers caressed the back of her shoulder, she would forget that she was doing this because she was attracted to his lithe body.

She might realize that she was just about howling his name because something in her loved who he was. If he could just cut through her armor the way she had his. If he could get her feeling musical and stupid and inspired and soft and utterly in love every time he was around her. The payback would be sweet.

“You’re going to critique my swordwork now?” he asked in between nibbling her throat and helping her shaking fingers, usually so expert and dextrous, unzip his pants. His sarcasm was like a knife against her throat to remind her that he still had his sharp edges, at least until she was willing to relinquish her own.

“Only that you’d call it ‘swordwork’?” She said disparagingly. Nonetheless, she was laughing, and he didn’t mind.

Byleth brought her mouth toward his hips, and Felix forgot how to breathe.

* * *

**36\. a secret need exposed and that’s a guarantee**

“So,” Felix began, trying to act nonchalant despite being skin-to-skin with Byleth, so much so that she could feel every bit of his tensed back, even if his hands never shook. “Do you promise to be serious about this? Are we exclusive, then?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Of course it is. Isn’t that what we just fought about for three weeks?”

“Not exactly… I mean we can both have different reasons for fighting. But that wasn’t what I was fighting about.” If Byleth had a piano in front of her, she could play him some music to explain how all of her distance had been about their stupid fragility, their painful vulnerability. How overwhelming it had been to come to terms with the intense and bitter, competitive, obsessive attraction that drew them together, and the mutual respect and care that now bound them.

Since she had no piano though, she only had their skin to say it. She whispered her fingers down the back of Felix’s neck. She ran them softly over his shoulders, tracing the muscles down his back before she wrapped her arms around his chest. She hugged him to her.

“You’re right.” He said, slightly short of breath from all the attention. “That isn’t exactly why we fought. But still—”

“If you want to be exclusive, I’ll be exclusive with you. I haven’t seen anybody else since we started dueting.”

“But you have flirted with people,” he felt petty pointing it out. But how could he get it out of his mind if he didn’t? “I’ve seen you flirting with people. You only really stopped after Sylvain talked to you.”

“Isn’t that evidence enough, though?”

But Felix didn’t have to say it, she read it in the set of his bones, the ways his stomach tensed under her hands. No, it was not enough.

“Flirting,” she said as if she had never really thought about the word before. “None of it meant much to me if that’s what’s worrying you. What I had with you, fighting, you could say. That meant much more to me. The rest was just…” she didn’t want to say casual, the word still lingered between the two of them like an open wound.

Into the silence, she heard him mutter, “Well I don’t want you fighting other people either if that’s how you feel about it.”

She sighed, knowing that close as they were, he would be able to feel it in his core. “If it upsets you, I’ll definitely stop. I already have.”

“Good,” he said, turning toward her in her arms so that he was on top of her again.

And seeing the intense look in his eyes, the look that told her that she was his and he had come to claim her, she couldn’t help but want to tease him a little bit. “Before getting to know you, I would never have guessed you were the jealous type, though,” she sang it like the thinnest razor blade held to his throat.

 _Then you clearly haven’t been paying attention_ , his mind was saying to her. But his mouth said, “I don’t care what you do, idiot.” It was difficult, he realized, saying things like that to her, now that they had shared so much.

Byleth was almost taken aback, almost ready to lash out against him. But, with a wisdom her mouth didn’t have, her mind took control. She thought about that time Felix had sought her out at the party, telling her, _I don’t care who you fucked and I don’t want your body_. What a liar he had been. If he could have just said what he meant, would it have changed things between them? There was no helping it now—just more pieces of a guarded and worthwhile person falling into place.

And since she had promised not to treat him casually, but with respect and gravity for their romance, that meant respect in this too. His jealousy, she told herself, wasn’t something to laugh about. His devotion was likely more than she ever deserved.

“Oh,” she drew out slowly and carefully, dispelling the glee from her face. “I should have seen it.”

She was looking at him as if he were a jewel she had found in a muddy garden and had shined with her grimy sleeves. She was touching his hair affectionately, wondering if she should tell him how honored she was. That he was the only person in the world who would be jealous of her affection. That, in all her adulthood, there had never been anyone who looked so gorgeously as if he would cut down everyone who turned a desirous eye on her.

Perhaps it was too tender, the look she was giving him. Perhaps there was too much gratitude in the soft way she kissed his temple right below this hairline.

His eyes grew tight, and a pained grimace pulled his lips into a frown.

“Byleth.” She thought he was going to yell at her not to tease him. But instead, he burned his eyes into hers and said, “I will love you so hard that you will forget all about those other fools!”

It was silly. She ought to have made fun of him for it. She really ought to have teased him then, as he huffed still looking furiously at her.

But all she could do was shoot up straight in the sheets, with the shocked look of a student who has been called on in class while sleeping through the lecture. “Love?” she squawked, blushing up to her hairline.

“Fuck,” he said. “I mean to say ‘fuck’.”

“Oh right, like ‘make love.’” She relaxed against him, looking at her fingernails. They could do this. They could both pretend that he had only meant it physically, that she had only wanted it physically. “Rhetorically. As a matter of rhetorical expression…”

“For fucking,” Felix said. His face beet red and half-hidden behind a sheet.

“Right well I look forward to that.” Felix choked out a laugh, so she continued. “Will it happen every time I make you jealous, or just some of the time. Is there a hit rate that I can approximate to make sure we’re alone when it happens…”

“Shut up,” Felix said. But there was no anger. The only bite to it was from his teeth, nipping at the tip of her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Felix starts texting music theory to Byleth, oh man, the heat is on.
> 
> It took a lot of coaxing to get these two to stop being jerks to each other and open up. The next chapter ties up the duet as well as some of the other events from the story.
> 
> Thank you for all your support and comments! When I see them, they make my whole week. Wishing you good health!


	7. Encore: I'd Share a Life and You'd Share a Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring:  
> \- Some nauseatingly twee romance  
> \- Grabbing a beer with Jeralt  
> \- Rodrigue is also very much alive  
> \- Two rock concerts and two classical concerts  
> \- A welcome surprise tucked into a departmental envelope  
> \- Plans to adopt a cat (not really implied, just wishful thinking)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amazing [endspire](https://twitter.com/end_spire) has created beautiful fanart for this fic. [Check it out!](https://twitter.com/end_spire/status/1259237137519652864?s=20)
> 
> [A playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57EBQl19oaRDIEXm4LwPCJ?si=-37XS5CVShalMfhppP98mw) for musical reference.

**37\. I don't mind just what you do**

Felix spent Saturday in Byleth’s bed, making up for lost time amidst the unspoken thoughts that had piled up in their separation. And if their communication was mostly physical expression, calloused caresses, and piano dueling, that was just who they were.

Sunday adopted the leisurely twangs of your basic twee romance: Studying and lounging, cuddling, and necking in Byleth’s tiny apartment. They made grilled cheeses when hungry. When they studied, they listened to shoegaze playlists, Arthur Rubinstein recordings while they ate, and they even took a nooner to a recording of _Six Morceaux_.

When played on Byleth’s electric piano, their duet was a pale imitation of the real wires they sounded in the practice rooms. There was consolation, however, in the ease of their playing. Now, their fingers yearned to dance so closely together, as they trilled a sublimation of emotions that continued to catch in both of their throats.

If Felix would get huffy, because Byleth bent the rhythms of the Romance with a little too much rubato, she shut him up with a kiss. And when Byleth became annoyed every time Felix left her behind during the Scherzo, he smirked a bite right against her jaw.

  
For a long time, there was an awkward email draft in Byleth’s inbox addressed to Seteth. In it, she informed him of her duet with Felix, stating their intention to host a performance. Every morning, after she answered desperate emails from her students, Byleth’s finger hovered over sending it.

The stage of rebuilding trust was as Edenic as it was needy. In her mind, Byleth imagined Felix’s knife-thin smile decorating her stomach with kisses. Her mental images of their time together were tinged by the rich campfire warmth and shadows from their first intimacy, rich contrasts coating the scene like a photoshop overlay. She moved her hands down her waist, imagining that they were his.

Felix, of course, would not mention what thoughts of Byleth tended to fill his mind. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to infer from the particularly wicked smirks his mouth would form in the middle of a boring theory lecture. Or the careful way he snatched the cig from her fingers, grinding it under his heel before he backed her against the siding of the coffeehouse.

Their plans were as careful as the negotiations between two distrustful swordmasters, each waiting to counter the first move of the other. Perhaps the only thing saving them at this point was that they both agreed to observe the no-walking-out rule. But it's likely there was more to it than that.

Byleth had always known Felix’s skill for seeing right through the bullshit, but as he opened up more she found him to be reliable and bright. When she managed to inspire it, his laugh could make her whole body feel numb and buzzing, like taking a choking-coughing hit of a purple-so-purple indica.

The vein of their courtship continued to pulse with the unique rhythms of the music they played. Their duet had shaped up to the point that they were consistently playing each part well. One Sunday morning, after Felix left her warm bed to get some work done, Byleth pulled the trigger on sending the email to Seteth.

Seteth managed to arrange a small, private recital for them on the same weekend as the concert with Rodrigue. If Byleth felt butterflies about playing a duet with Felix, that was for Spring-semester Byleth to worry about. This was the winter, and their primary job was keeping each other as cozy as possible.

They lazily interspersed their Thursday opening chores at Mach with stolen kisses, their hands like brush strokes painting each other with rosy blushes. When it was just the two of them, Byleth smoked less. She could satisfy any array of cravings by distracting herself with Felix, playfully tugging his hair with one eye on her research notes. When he minded, he let her known by batting her away. His hands half-heartedly clawed her with the same curved fingers needed to play his precious Bach. And even that made her smile.

Felix had his own brand of affection, which wasn’t limited to the warm way he sometimes called her an idiot, with his eyes all wide and glossed like he had just found a precious morel on the forest floor. Sometimes, when he was sure no one was looking, he just snagged her and held her, as if needing to take a quick hit before going on with his life. And, almost as good, he scowled forbiddingly at anyone who made her uncomfortable enough to sink back into her cold, expressionless mask.

  
When the semester ended, Felix spent winter break with Rodrigue, while Byleth peppered her holidays with visits to Jeralt. It sufficed for the couple to communicate briefly by phone every few days.

Felix sent messages about how glad he was to play the familiar studio upright he had learned on. Every so often, he mentioned what he was doing: That he and Rodrigue were having dinner, that Dimitri was visiting, that Sylvain and Ingrid came by to watch a movie, that he and Rodrigue were practicing together.

Felix never said, _I miss you_ or _I’m thinking of you_ , he just said stuff like, _you should learn this prelude_ or he sent links to other contemporary composers whose styles he thought she should study. His messages were all text, but Byleth could read the subtext loud and clear.

Byleth sent audio clips of jamming with her dad. She had managed to teach Jeralt the melody line of Chopin’s famous Nocturne in Eb Major on the electric guitar, and together they had made a post-rock hybrid from the piece. She told Felix about all the shows she and Jeralt went to, as all the far-flung rockers came back to their families and towns for the holidays, covering Don McLean each night and filling the pubs where they had, years ago, quaffed their first beer.

Jeralt was settled into a small house owned by an old bandmate of his. The fridge was stocked with the necessities of beer, cheese, and crackers. Large amps served as end tables for the couch where Jeralt had taken to sleeping while Byleth used his room.

“So you like teaching, huh?” Jeralt asked, passing her a beer across the kitchen table. She did like her students, she explained, but academics wouldn’t be her end-game. She didn’t see herself teaching past her contract’s terms.

By their third beer, Byleth was able to fully explain her composing ambitions to her dad. In his own way, Jeralt knew what it was like to write music. He knew the firebreathing excitement of startling yourself with an emotional stroke of genius that seemed to rise from nothing. He understood the strength that came along with being able to say what you meant. 

And as he and Byleth gushed, she let slip how grateful she was to have someone perfect to play it all. It would never make her famous, she admitted quietly.

“I don’t care about you being famous, kid,” Jeralt said, quaffing the whole last third of his beer in a gulp. “I’m happy you found something you care about. You were always so bored with everything when we were on the road. But tell me about this perfect pianist.”

Byleth blushed and looked away from Jeralt. “Come on, I thought three beers would be enough to get you to talk about it. Do I need to ply you with another one?”

“I’ll take another,” Byleth puffed out a laugh.

“Only if you tell me about him.” But Jeralt was already getting up to open the fridge.

“Well, aside from being a ‘perfect pianist’ as you put it. He’s pretty grumpy. I don’t know how else to explain it. But beneath all that he’s very kind, protective, concerned about others—”

“He’s good to you?” Jeralt asked, sliding the beer across the table to her, along with a bottle opener in the shape of a skull.

“So much so.” Her mind brushed back through memories of seeing Felix’s text-messages in the morning—ever practical, as if he filled the earliest moments of every day searching out something relevant to message her. “Actually,” she said, after swigging the cold beer, “There’s something I wanted to ask you. Would you be interested in visiting the campus, if I was giving a recital?”

* * *

**38\. as long as it’s with me**

The Spring semester began with a bang—or, well, a lot of banging. It took an unproductive week or two before Byleth and Felix could manage to get their too-valuable hands off of each other and onto the keys.

When she had finally recovered the semblance of a routine, Byleth sent Felix an empty email with a single pdf attachment. He opened and printed it as soon as he was out of class. He grabbed each sheet as it fell from the printer, running his fingers over the bars and staffs as if they were a special kind of braille. The title “Prelude in C Minor”. The subtitle, “for Felix.”

The first chance he got, he took Byleth’s composition to the practice rooms. He let his hands trace the melody, but it was frequently swamped by a rising tide of loud banging chords. He didn’t mind the thunder and strife, though, and his fingers seemed to remember and add their own sorrow to the parts that she had written during their separation. 

Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but feel rays of hope under his fingers. She had written in runs that seemed to be fleeing the harsh dissonant chords, their structure clean and bright. Chromatic scales grand enough to rival Chopin’s turned the piece from a tragedy into a harlequinade. And then softly, so smoothly, as if she were playing the transition herself with her unique improvisation, she changed the key using the inversions he had suggested.

And there, in the key of D was their romance. The sweet parts of it. The quick tumbles in the sheets, and the long, drawn-out makeouts when no one was watching. The supportive way she attended every concert whether he played or not. The strong way he occupied the once empty seat next to her, despite whatever gossip it let fly. She had even managed to write in the kindly way that their golden-hearted friends looked upon their stupid, soppy romance.

When he finished the final run, which had trickily doubled back on itself twice before ending with a bang of major chords, she was the only one he wanted to see.

  
The students renewed the Spring with concerts, shows, and parties, and the warm air revivified the students. Even Rhea was going a little easier on Byleth. If this was due to Byleth mellowing out, she’d never admit it herself.

The new semester also meant that she was teaching a new class, which freed many of her previous students to be her friends. Over cards and tea, she told Claude about her musical ambitions, and he told her all about his travel plans to head East after graduation.

Under Byleth and Felix, Thursday nights at Mach attracted a gathering of the skilled and the strategic. Claude lounged on the porch, boneless as a cat and dealing cards for a game of spades. Byleth made sure to sit across from Felix so that they would be paired, while Sylvain lounged between them.

“Is that fair?” Claude complained, looking between Byleth and Felix. “Don’t you guys have some kind of telepathy these days?”

“Nah, we can take them,” Sylvain said with a wink. “Byleth can’t use her poker face when Felix is around. She’s too much in love.”

Byleth’s face blanched, just as Sylvain had expected. Across from her, Felix’s was burnishing red. Byleth expected her surly spades partner to get defensive. He might yell at Sylvain not to tease them or huff off and leave her to deal with the other two card sharps. Instead, though, he singed his annoyed glare straight at her, willing her to say something—anything. Or wait—anything?

“There’s no way I won’t still beat you, Sylvain,” she did her best to act natural. “Should we do a few rounds of suicides to begin, just to prove who’s best?”

“No,” Claude cut in, “The usual scoring. Besides, you already had an unfair advantage growing around card sharps. I still think you cheat.”

“We’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Sylvain said with another wink.

“You always do,” Byleth spoke under her breath. If anyone registered her words, though, they were promptly distracted as the group began placing bets.

“Two tricks,” Felix said, his mouth clenched tight in a way that made Byleth fairly sure he was about to sandbag them.

“Six tricks,” she bid, already looking for ways to take the extra spades Felix so obviously had in his hands. He wasn’t a bad player, he just needed to learn to bid better. Whatever, they weren’t going to lose on her watch.

* * *

**39\. I’d take you where nobody knows you**

Annette’s concert was the first event that pulled everyone together that Spring. After furiously writing lyrics all Winter break, Annette had handed Byleth a pile of note pages, accompanied by a pleading look that she couldn’t turn down.

Fortunately, Byleth enjoyed writing the piano parts for Annette’s rapidly maturing setlist. She could twirl in tones from jazz, honky-tonk, bluegrass, classical, mixing and gathering any sound that would make the song pop.

The Mach Coffeehouse crew set up Annette’s outdoor show. Caspar hauled the supports for a raised platform, and Edelgard directed where everything should go, while Leonie gaphed about running the wires. On the platform, it would just be Annette and Byleth, coming through with the keys.

Outdoor concerts invited a sense of sprawl, not only in space but also in pacing. In between songs, Byleth got a chance to observe her friends as they milled around. They swayed and danced, clapped at the right times, and sang along to the few covers that were on the set-list. As their heads nodded to the soft beats, Byleth couldn’t help but assume that a good ten percent of them were stoned, looking like they had opened a magical door to the heart of music.

Felix stuck by Byleth whenever she stepped off the raised platform. They had fallen into an ease at the few Mach concerts they attended. Felix took the lead at hardcore shows, shadowboxing at her with his dancing-punching, and she dodged around him in a strange two-step. They had enough fun with it that they had even started to attend Catherine’s kickboxing lessons on the weekends.

When it came to the softer, more melodic shows—the space rock, the shoegaze, and sweet singer-songwriter stuff—Felix didn’t always know what to do with himself until he got a moment to sink into the vocals. Sometimes Byleth would take his hand, or he would drape his arm around her waist in rare moments of PDA. Other times, he would just watch her as she reacted to the mellow tones.

Annette’s concert was no different. Except that, whenever Byleth got on the platform to play, he felt like he was falling right into the sound.

  
“Remember that one time we improvised together?” Byleth asked as they sat side-by-side on the piano bench in the practice room, having just finished a good run of the Waltz.

“What about it?” If she wanted him to remember the melody, she would be sorely disappointed. All the events of that day had been felted into his memories of kissing her, the leaping joy of her taking him back to her apartment, and—

“Would you want to try it again?”

“I don’t know,” he watched Byleth’s face. He watched it not smile at him. Had she expected him to be excited about improvising, just because she was? “Maybe another time.”

“Okay. It’s easier if you get a little liquored up, anyway.”

“Then we should try it at your place,” Felix raised his eyebrows, shooting Byleth a message that she needed no cue to receive. “I do have something I want to play for you, though.”

He reached into his portfolio and brought out the pages of her score, printed on cheap copier paper that didn’t deserve the notes that graced it. He had marked it up with his sharply inconsistent handwriting. His notes tracked the sticky spots and filled in accidentals where things got a little confusing. He had even added in some of his own dynamics.

Seeing the familiar heading, Byleth brought around the folding chair to give him space. It gave her something to do while she closeted her nerves back inside. Hearing the first five bars, however, was all she needed to allay her fears.

Felix’s playing made music that she had only been able to achieve in her mind. Even her own fingers couldn’t trail the notes so ideally across their keys. Each bar told a part of the story she had written to convince him that everything she felt was real. And yet, he was the one pulling it into reality.

His fingers rendered that last run of difficult sixteenth notes, then rose with the loud crash that she knew was normally so uncomfortable for him, before resolving into the soft ghost sigh of the whole note. His fingers left the keys—practiced and clean—and he looked silently at Byleth, waiting, wanting, not knowing if he had done it right.

“Felix.” Her breath was short from hearing him bring into existence the thing she had worked at for so long. “That was exactly how I imagined it should be. That’s just what that piece should sound like. You did it—you did it perfectly.” As she might have predicted, words weren't really saying everything she needed to communicate.

She dropped onto the bench beside him, and his eyes grew large and encompassing as she grasped him. She slipped her hands into the shallows of his sweater to hold on tighter, and he cradled her there, with her head resting against his chest to listen to his musicbox heartbeat, which was still ticking out her rhythms.

“I—” she began, but she didn’t know how to say it. “I—”

He smiled down at her. “I know.”

“You’re such an amazing musician,” she fell back lamely.

And yet, he knew what she meant. “You’re not so bad as a composer. Now let’s get out of here.”

  
The second concert was Dorothea’s in the Abyss Pub, and it was a much larger affair. Dorothea had brought on a drummer in addition to her saxophonist, she was playing a guitar now, and Yuri was there with his vocals and auxiliary percussion. Bernadetta fluttered in a corner close to the stage, smiling as her lyrics came out so bright and beautiful from the two trained voices.

Byleth and Ingrid had volunteered to grab a round from the bar. From where she stood next to Ingrid’s steady presence, Byleth watched Felix nod his head. His faraway look told her that the vocals were hitting the spot.

“He really likes you, you know?” Ingrid said, following the direction of Byleth’s eyes. “I haven’t seen him like this before.”

“I probably haven’t been like this before either.” Byleth's smile was coy and she hid it by looking at the glassy bottles lining the back of the bar.

“Good.” Ingrid left it at that, turning around to grab three of the drinks Catherine was sliding to them across the counter.

It was no surprise that the band was good. What was more of a surprise was seeing Sylvain at a concert. He carried a bouquet that looked a little worse for wear, as if they had been purchased that morning and dragged through the school day. Sylvain rushed to where Felix was standing, looking almost as ruffled as the bouquet.

“Who’s that for?” Felix asked, squinting at it.

“‘Thea of course,” Sylvain said. He trained his eyes on the splendid vocalist. He checked his appearance with his phone camera and smoothed back his hair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should go up closer so that she knows that I’m here.”

When the concert ended and ceded to the afterparty, Felix and Byleth went together. Felix watched Byleth like a hawk as she assured Edelgard she would take at least one Mach shift over the summer. He tracked her as she chatted with Ferdinand and Hubert, knowing that time spent with him was less time she spent at Noble Tea. Over Ingrid’s shoulder, he saw her chatting with Claude and Hilda, whose wide eyes kept slanting over to where Felix was standing, constantly on the verge of asking something improper.

Ingrid stepped aside to create an opening for Byleth to gravitate back to Felix’s side. Byleth took a sip from Felix’s rye glass, first, and then asked him permission, second. He glared at her, but it was the special smoldering glare he reserved just for her.

For once, the parties didn’t feel like the dwellings of hostile gossip, and it had become easier to enjoy the good of them. The swaying freedom of the dancing. The bright way that everyone greeted each other. The quiet conversations, as their friends opened up and unraveled each other in the secret mysteries of their individual courtships.

* * *

**40\. and nobody gives a damn**

On the morning of his father’s concert, Felix woke up in Byleth’s bed. He was getting used to this. In the night, they turned and sprawled in separate directions, Felix remaining toward the outside of the bed and Byleth often wedging herself into the corner where the bed met the wall. As he started to wake—since he generally got up earlier than her—he would pull himself back to her side, prying her from the corner and tucking her head into his neck.

Byleth was a heavy sleeper. Sometimes she even snored, particularly if they had been drinking the night before. Sometimes he worried about her lungs, painted black, when he heard her breathing harder than she should. But she was getting better. Smoking was no longer the first thing she thought to do when she woke up, kissing him was.

That morning Felix slipped out of bed quickly to get to his practice with Rodrigue. Things weren’t exactly good with his dad, but they weren’t as bad as they could be either. It helped that after his current tour, Rodrigue was going to settle down and do some recording. It helped that Rodrigue’s playing was so familiar to Felix, after a childhood of hearing it, that their duet parts fit easily into place. It helped that somehow Felix had learned to become a little flexible, a little expressive.

He spent the day in Rodrigue’s rehearsal space, wondering when it would be a good time to mention his concert with Byleth in two days. Even worse, he was wondering how to phrase asking his father to come at all. He wasn’t used to being the supplicant in the relationship.

“Old man,” Felix said, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Rodrigue had just finished rehearsing one of the last pieces that Lambert had written.

“Yes, Felix?” Rodrique said, turning around and pinching his nose as if staving off a Felix-headache.

“I’m performing again in two days.”

“Oh! Yes, Dimitri informed me.” Rodrigue held his tongue from telling Felix that he already intended to attend the recital.

“I’d like you to be there.”

“Of course, if you wish it,” Rodrigue brought his hand away from his face. If Felix noticed his father’s relieved look, he didn’t say anything.

“But no marketing—at all—it’s just our friends.”

“‘Our’ friends?” Rodrigue’s cat-like eyes flashed lightly with the tease, but of course, Felix would take him too seriously.

“My duet partner and I.”

“I see. Will your ‘duet partner’ be attending our concert tonight?”

“If she feels like it,” Felix said dismissively while thinking to himself that she damn well better.

  
From the wings of the concert later, Felix searched Byleth out of the crowd of stuffy suits and finery. He frowned until he finally saw a row of people with green hair. Regent Professor Rhea sat next to Seteth’s little sister, then there was Seteth, Byleth next to him, and on Byleth’s other side was an older man with a broad chest and graying-brown hair. She leaned toward him in her chair. As Felix watched them throughout the concert, he noticed the two of them sharing a closed-faced commentary.

When Rodrigue finished his solo part of the concert, he introduced Felix in the clean, plain style that Felix preferred. Felix entered the stage to the loud, bright applause of people who had come to see a famous father and son, but his eyes were searching out Byleth the whole time.

The notes came easily when he sat down to play the Vivaldi. Despite the minor key, it felt bright and jumpy under his fingers, after all the mellow tones he and Byleth had been playing. Fortunately, Rodrigue’s playing was perfectly predictable. This allowed the rest of the show to continue just as predictably right up to the final applause.

It’s customary for musicians to greet their audience at the end of a show. Rodrigue never went all the way out into the house. Instead, he lingered at the edge of the stage, and Felix walked alongside him, taking his place as a duty.

Clustered toward the front of the house, Byleth and her father were standing with the grouped music faculty. She was smilingly introducing Jeralt to Seteth, while Rhea greeted Rodrigue, both of them of-a-pace in their upper-crust pleasantries.

While Felix scowled to deflect the hangers-on who came to congratulate him, Rodrigue turned to them graciously with easy greetings and jokes. That is until Byleth brought her father toward them and Felix felt his tension become something else entirely.

She introduced her father to Rodrigue, presenting herself as a graduate candidate in the music faculty, then their fathers shook hands, the grungy bar rocker meeting the classical musician. Byleth and Felix locked eyes behind the men’s backs, and she rocked him a tiny smile that made him feel less like a sick cat. If either of them was concerned that Rodrigue had no idea who he was meeting, they didn’t have to social savvy to explain it.

Rhea approached the group. Her face beamed, and Byleth struggled to bite back her suspicions. “That was well done,” Rhea said to Felix. “We are so glad you decided to perform. May this be the start of many grand performances for you.”

“And it won’t be Felix’s only performance this weekend, either.” Rodrigue cut in. Byleth could feel Jeralt shadowing her. She didn’t know how everything had become so tense.

“No, of course, our two best pianists will be performing together, and we are so proud.” Rhea agreed smoothly. “Now hopefully Felix can convince Byleth to pursue her Ph.D, just as Byleth had convinced Felix of this performance.”

“Not if Byleth doesn’t want to,” came Jeralt’s hackles-raised response.

“It’s not the same.” Felix protested at the same time. “Byleth convinced me to play for one night, you would have her do research that she hates for the next five years.” Byleth meant for her shaking head to tell Felix to back down, but he had his stubborn glare set on Rhea.

“Is that how she feels about it? Do you hate our research, Byleth?” Rhea’s serene face held a modicum of shock, as she confronted something she had never stopped to consider.

“I don’t feel strongly about it,” Byleth said, hoping that came off as sweetly as she meant it to.

“I see,” Rhea said, “and you think your life would be better as a composer?”

“It’s what I want,” Byleth responded resolutely.

“Composing is a hard life,” Rhea said.

“Nonsense,” Felix said. Byleth watched Rodrigue close his eyes wearily at the disrespect.

“Felix, enough,” Rodrigue said.

“She’s good,” the son growled turning toward the father.

They held each other’s eyes for a few tense moments before Rodrigue nodded. “Well, if it’s composition that we’re talking about,” he said pleasantly, his quick recovery giving Byleth a sense of whiplash, “then I certainly have some pull in that.” Byleth was amazed at how well he could keep abreast of the conversation despite all the nothing Felix had told.

“See?” Felix said not looking directly at Rhea.

Byleth wanted to stop time. She wanted to open up space for just the two of them, where she could grab Felix’s hand, drag them both backstage, pepper him with kisses, and hold him where no one could get them. As kind as Rodrigue's offers were, Byleth imagined hiding the two of them somewhere no one was trying to know their names or make them into people they weren’t.

She felt Jeralt’s calloused hand directing her out of the firing line. She wanted to ask him if she was doing the right thing, but he was looking down at her with so much pride that one glance silenced all her qualms.

“Indeed,” Rhea said looking weary, “Well, we have kept our guest too long.” She smiled at Rodrigue, “The rest of the music faculty will be awaiting us at the restaurant.”

“Ah, yes,” Rodrigue said, “I am looking forward to it. Felix are you interested in joining us now?”

“No,” Felix said, still looking annoyed at how the conversation had turned. Rodrigue shot him a swift glare. “I’m not interested in speaking with donors.”

“Probably for the best,” Byleth heard Rodrigue under his breath. Jeralt’s light chuckle behind her was like a little mallet breaking the tension. Byleth said her awkward goodbyes to the music faculty, before standing aside as Rhea led Rodrigue out.

  
“So what now, kid?” Jeralt asked, his hand back on Byleth’s shoulder.

“To the pub, of course,” she said with a mischievous smile.

“I really have been a bad influence on you, haven’t I?” Jeralt laughed.

Felix looked like he was about to bolt, but Byleth caught his arm. “You’re coming with us,” she said. “Meet my dad.” Jeralt and Felix shook. Felix looked begrudgingly curious, as the corner of Jeralt’s mouth deepened with mirth.

The three of them made their way to pub abyss. It only took two rounds before the little complaints about the scene back at the concert had become water under the bridge. Third-beer-Jeralt started telling stories about Byleth.

How, when she caught her first fish, she couldn’t get the hook out of its mouth and ran it around the local pub showing it off—the bloody hook still goring the fish’s mouth and her hands cut up from grasping its sharp writhing fins.

How her first piano performance had been accompanying a fiddler playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” And how everyone had thought she was so cute that she earned three times the tips of the other performers.

The third whiskey-ginger freed Felix’s laugh. Byleth and her demons. He loved every last one of them. Loved, though?—oh, shit, he should slow down.

By Jeralt’s fifth beer, someone had tipped the others off to where they were. Suddenly Sylvain and Claude were walking through the door, followed by Ingrid, Mercedes, and Annette. None of them asked as they pulled up a chair, or as Sylvain reached over Felix to shake Jeralt’s hand.

Felix fell into a conversation with Sylvain of which Byleth could only hear snippets. Sylvain was saying things like, “…It’s the right thing...” The chatter was making it difficult to pay attention to anyone conversation.

Byleth raised her eyebrows to Jeralt, as Catherine came over to him with a comped beer, introducing herself jovially. “Sorry for the noise,” Jeralt said to Catherine, gesturing and shrugging about the throng of college students that seemed to continuously materialize around them. “We tip well,” he promised.

Still, more kept appearing. Ignatz, Leonie, and Lysithea were coming over to their table now, and Byleth waved them on. “These were my first students,” Byleth told her dad excitedly.

Catherine merely shrugged. “It just makes it a good Friday night for me,” she said before going back behind the bar, bragging to Shamir about shaking Jeralt’s hand.

Byleth’s sixth beer slapped hard. She was feeling well beyond buzzed, and she was more than ready to be anywhere but there. Her mind kept flickering to the quiet campfire clearing, and the silent moments she had shared there with Felix.

Felix, who had stood up for her to Rhea with nothing to gain from it. Felix, who was now looking deeply uncomfortable, forced to share half his seat with Ingrid.

“I’m going to get out of here, dad,” she said to Jeralt.

“Okay kiddo,” he said. “Thanks for hanging out with your old man. You know, it’s crazy seeing you like this, so relaxed and open. You really like these kids, huh? It’s good for you, I’ve never seen you smile so much.”

Byleth was at a loss for words and her head was feeling too warm. The nice thing about Jeralt, though, was that he didn’t always need a response. “Are you going to stick around here longer?”

“I could use a few more beers in the tank before bed. But you’re welcome to go. It looks like someone else needs to get out of here too.” He was looking at Felix who was half-way between wilted and lashing out aggressively at the crowd.

“I’ll find you tomorrow,” she said, standing up before Leonie almost immediately dropped into her spot.

Byleth said her goodbyes, giving drunken one-armed hugs. She saved her most sincere hugs for Annette, Claude, and Sylvain, before she pulled Felix up by the arm.

“Let’s go.” She steadied him as he stumbled slightly.

“Finally,” he just about slurred.

They both wobbled outside of the bar, leaning against each other in the loose-limbed way that was more drunken survival than PDA.

“Where do you want to go?” She hummed close to his ear. “I could walk you home or…”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course, I want to go home with you.” She laughed and drunkenly pecked his cheek, as they supported each other down the sidewalk.

* * *

**41\. what I’m trying to say**

His calming teal button-down was tucked neatly into perfectly fitted pants. His hair looked neater than she had ever seen it, but she missed the soft fringe of flyaways around his face. And he smelled good too, like pine and a little smoke, and was that tonka bean vanilla? In other words, Felix looked stunning for their concert.

Byleth felt herself melting. She could get lost in the sharp wings of his amber eyes. She wanted to wrap her fingers into the tight hold of his hair and turn it all to fly-away. In her mind, she saw herself untucking his shirt, running her hands up his chest, and kissing his stomach with her open-mouthed biting until he made those deep groans that sent spasms up her spine.

Byleth, for her part, was wearing a deep-blue gown. Annette had picked it out for her, shooting Byleth a mischievous wink in the store when she had selected it from the rack. It was sleeveless to free her movement while playing.

Its real draw, however, hadn’t been this practicality. For example, Felix couldn’t stop looking at her chest, and he blushed his nervous rose madder to his hairline. The color in his face looked so soft and delicate with the teal of his button-down.

“Byleth—” he choked out.

“Don’t say anything,” she warned. However, she couldn’t hide how gratifying his reaction was.

“This isn’t the place for.” And still, the prospect of it sent a round of blushing between them.

“Everyone we know is in the next room—our dads included,” and yet, she reached out to him, her fingers brushing his jaw. “Is it too distracting?” She made matters worse by throwing her shoulders back and looking down at herself, trying to see herself the way he did. “I can still change.” Felix cleared his throat.

Byleth looked up to see him staring at her, eyes darkened, lips slightly parted. She slipped a finger into his belt and watched as his jaw dropped just a little bit more. She was raising her hand toward his face again, but he intercepted it before she could touch him. “Stop,” he hissed in exasperation. “I should be asking you the same thing, huh? Keep it in your pants.”

“For now,” she teased, twisting away from him. “It’s just, you look great.”

“I thought we weren’t going to say anything.” When she shrugged he kept his eyes away from her chest. He watched her toned shoulders lift, her coy smile, the curve of her neck right above where the dress cloaked it—and, oh, there was no safe place to look. He turned his eyes toward the high ceiling and catwalk of the small theater. “You do too.”

“We’re ready for this, right?” This was unexpected. Was she nervous?

“We are.” His affirmation was clear and stubborn. He wanted to play all the music with Byleth, to compose and record with her. He wanted to tour with her in small, intimate venues and local clubs, booked by people who loved music more than they did donors. He wanted to cut his path with her, even if that meant giving up the clear and certain opportunities for which he had been groomed. And he had more shortterm goals too. He wanted to skim his hands down the front of her low-cut dress and kiss her on the neck until she melted against him.

“Seven minutes,” she said. Yes, seven minutes until they performed their duet. Seven minutes before validating that cherished practice that taught them about each other. And then, after, there would be the rest of their lives.

“Byleth, I—” she turned her green lamps on him, and it was like the wind went out of the room, leaving him choking in a vacuum. Six minutes. “I—”

“Felix, I know.” Her hands were shaking. “You don’t have to say it. But right now, I feel nervous.”

“Stop shaking, you’re the best pianist I know,” he kissed her on the top of her head.

“Besides you,” she said under her breath.

“But this isn’t a competition, right?” He walked into the small wing of the tiny theater. The minutes counted down to one. They went out to the piano together, grateful for keeping their recital a small affair, where the intimate house was full of their friends and remaining family.

They slid onto the stool, their legs brushing naturally. “Count us off,” Byleth said under her breath. So, Felix began the concert, rocking and swaying just as they practiced. He remembered the first time he saw Byleth perform, how her soft, turbulent interpretation of Mendelssohn had caught him off his guard. He toned the depths of the lagoons, while she skimmed the high salty airs of the boat song.

They switched seats for the Scherzo. That fast piece seemed to characterize all of Felix’s flashy jabs and light-footed whirls. Byleth bit back a grin, remembering Felix in the midst of his absurd mosh-dancing, allowing himself that rare loss of control.

The Russian Theme came next, and with it, Byleth told the audience a soft narrative of two stubborn people learning about each other. Theme-forward and repetitive, it revealed the characters—a blustery man and a frigid woman—who pulled each other close with an obsession that rivaled the force with which they simultaneously repulsed each other.

When Felix took over the Waltz, Byleth could feel the blush of falling for the one person you fight with, the one person who could knock you right out. The light, prancing movements told of an instructor who was just learning what she wanted. The departures, fears, and arguments, as they learned how to listen to each other, and the kiss that broke down both of their defenses.

Byleth played primo on the Romance, her fingers skirting Felix’s as they sang out their first intimacy and the pain that followed. She confessed her stupid fragility and indecision, his hurt and betrayal. They sank low in the notes, trying to pridefully own the way that two people who know each other the best can hurt each other the most.

For the finale, Felix led the Slava, the great reprisal of all the themes. Under his fingers the composition revised Byleth’s original boat songs, reworking them in his style. Their duet rose into a complex call and response of “I—” and “I know.” And, “is this love,” and “perhaps.” And, “I really want to slip you out of that dress,” and “you would look so good with your hair down right now.” And, “the future looks alright with you,” and “do you think we can get away with this? You writing my music, me playing your music, us finding our own way,” and “yes, of course, of course, we’ll make it all work.” And “I—”; “I know.”

They raised their hands in unison at the end of the piece. It was a gesture that had taken them a week to practice, mostly because neither of them had managed the self-control not to grope the other before the last note died.

They took their bow, keeping it brief. Byleth was about to bee-line down the stage stairs to her dad’s seat, when Felix grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the wings. “You haven’t performed like this before, have you?” He hissed as he brought her behind him. “You can’t just go down there. You have to give them space.”

“I didn’t expect you to be so ceremonial about this,” she said, once they were safely nestled into the small wingspace of the stage.

“There’s a method. Sometimes it’s for a reason.” But he no longer looked at her like a man who was drowning, because her’s was a strong hand that had reached down to pull him into the boat. “Besides, we need a moment to—” he didn’t finish the words in his head, his hands already reaching toward her, seeking her with the pent up desire he had been pressing down all evening. His mouth tasted like caramel and brine, a scotch aged in bourbon barrels, a bourbon aged in the ocean.

He leaned her back against the flat of the wing. Her body slung into his, filling in all his gaps. Her knee raised against him. It was too hot too soon. It was all he wanted. It was completely inappropriate.

Byleth pulled away from him slowly. She had something she wanted to say. “Felix, I—.” Why was this so scary? They had already shared everything else. “I—”

Felix looked at her with a little frown on his face, and some of the heat went out of his body. “It’s okay,” he said, brushing it away. “I know. Now let’s get the rest of this over with.”

Byleth left the wings first, hurrying down the steps to hug her waiting father. Felix headed in the opposite direction to greet Rodrigue.

“Thank you for coming,” Byleth was saying, “I know it’s not your thing.”

“I’m not such an old punk, that I can’t recognize beauty when I hear it. You did well. Big dinner, tonight, huh kid?” Jeralt asked. “Practically everybody here was talking about attending.”

Byleth grinned at him. “We can skip out of it if you want to,” she said.

“Me? Please,” Jeralt rubbed his hand across his hair. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m just glad to know you have so many friends.”

Between Byleth and Felix, the entire staff of Mach Coffeehouse made it out to the concert for support. Not to mention the music faculty.

“Byleth,” Seteth said quietly from beside Jeralt. “I’m sorry I can’t make it to the dinner. I just wanted to congratulate you. You interpreted those pieces well.”

“That wasn’t just me, Seteth.”

“Well, I do congratulate you for inspiring hidden depths from Fraldarius. But that’s not what I want to talk about. As you probably know, one indication of a good composer can be how they interpret others’ music. I think that you have shown that. And despite not being your adviser, I would be happy to write you a recommendation when the time comes for you to apply for composition programs.”

“Oh Seteth, that is an honor, thank you. I’ll take you up on that—count on it.”

“And I as well,” Rhea said, coming to stand next to Seteth. “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. Nonetheless, if there is a direction where you would prefer to direct your studies, then we can discuss it.”

“Thank you, Rhea,” Byleth said stiffly. Albeit gratified, she didn’t relax until the two of them left.

“So you got what you wanted,” Jeralt said.

“I think I did,” Byleth responded, but she wasn’t looking at the retreating backs of the music faculty. Byleth’s eyes were all for Felix’s sullen face, as he walked with his dad over to where she was standing. “Who do you think is more intimidating,” she whispered up to her father, “you or my boyfriend’s dad?”

“You think that violinist has anything on me?” Jeralt laughed.

* * *

**42\. knock down the walls, I’m coming home**

Their performance may have gotten Felix and Byleth off the hook for all sorts of obligations around the music faculty, but not exams.

And yet, as tedious as exams were, Felix dreaded when they would be over. Summer break meant weeks of campus closure before summer classes began. Weeks that Mach Coffeehouse would close before it opened again for the summer.

It also meant making the last-minute decision of whether he should move back in with his dad since he and Byleth hadn’t planned this far into the future. Sylvain would be traveling for the summer. Ingrid had already left on a rec league tour with her rugby team. Dimitri would be staying on campus to take additional classes, and his pad was Felix’s unfortunate backup plan.

Summer thoughts drifted like pollen through Felix’s mind as he took his exam. They distracted him with thoughts of Byleth, the future, and that strange inscrutable look that Seteth was giving Felix every time he looked up. So he finished the exam as quickly as he could and turned in the assignment. To his surprise, Seteth followed him out of the classroom with something in his hand.

“Another instructor left this in my box for you,” the Dean said, handing Felix a large envelope. Then, Seteth paused, looking like he had more to say. “You’ve done a great job this year, and I know it hasn’t been easy.” This kind of praise always made Felix uncomfortable. To begin with, Felix had to agree that yes he did do a great job—he worked hard and he learned a lot. But at the same time, it still felt like it wasn’t enough.

“Thanks,” he said. Seteth nodded before stepping back into the classroom.

The envelope was thin, and he could feel something shifting around inside it. The first thing that he pulled out was the finished photocopy of Byleth’s new Nocturne. He smiled at the paper, already recognizing it as the melody that she had been humming for weeks now, whether she realized it or now.

But there was something else in the envelope. Rather than digging, he upended it in his hand. Out fell a key with a tag tied through its top. Written on the tag in Byleth’s handwriting was,

_“A key to my apartment. Come by whenever you’re ready. Love, Byleth.”_

Felix frowned. His heart raced, as he bent and turned the tag in the fluorescent light of the hallway. In the end, though, he had to admit that it was all her handwriting, all her ink, nothing pre-printed. His pulse hammered his throat.  
Byleth had actually written ‘love,’ and she had given him a key to her place.

Felix rushed through the rest of his day, printing and stapling and turning in assignments with an urgency that had nothing to do with exams. Once all his tasks were accomplished, he directed his hurrying feet to Byleth’s apartment. He had made this trek many times now, and each time he did it, it felt more automatic, like heading home. And now, for the first time, he had a key to open the door.

So Felix did. He inserted the key, paused to knock, and then, he twisted the key and opened it. Byleth turned toward the widening doorway from her kitchen. She had a chef knife raised in her hand, a rushed threat made ridiculous by the tomato juice dripping from the blade. She lowered the knife when she recognized Felix’s amused smirk. “You’re here.”

“Were you going to stab me?”

“If I had to.” She grinned. “You received my note then?”

“I decided I was ready.” He walked toward her into the kitchen. “You can cook?”

He peered down into a saucepot. All they’d ever prepared together were grilled cheeses. She kept the space meticulous, using different prep boards for different tasks. There was something comfortingly domestic about it. This side of Byleth was kind, warm, and a secret all his own.

“A few things,” Byleth responded, trying to mitigate expectations. She looked dubiously at the tomato she had just diced, wondering if it would be enough. Then, she shrugged and scraped it into the saucepan.

Felix stepped around her, taking in her charmingly domestic motions. She seemed comfortable with him there, at least. “Well, it looks appetizing”

“It still has a ways to go, though,” she said. “This needs simmering.” Byleth leaned against the one clean counter and looked up at him. “So you used my key?”

“Indeed.” He drew closer to her, wondering what new adventures she had been considering for their summer.

“Do you intend to use it again?” Her words came out short, in puffs. She was looking for something.

“I do.” _And again and again and again._

“Interesting. So what does that mean?”

“I think we both know,” he said. But, if his eyes were pleading with her not to make this weird, he found no reprieve from her.

“But I want to hear you say it.” She tugged his hands bringing him closer.

“Byleth, I—” Here they were again, choking on the words they both knew. But suddenly it seemed so absurd that something so obvious should be so difficult. “I love you.”

Byleth grinned at him, her eyes those same green seas that he’d happily drown in. Except that he was treading water, waiting for something. He pulled back from her slightly, raising his eyebrows.

“Well?” he asked. His amber eyes narrowed to sparks.

“Didn’t I already—?”

“You wrote ‘love’ to sign a card. It’s not the same.” His sudden angry expression pinned her against the counter. Then, he straightened up and stepped back to measure calm breaths through his nose. “But if you’re not ready, I can wait.”

As he took another step back, Byleth felt a painful sore-throat tug. She didn’t want him to walk away again. This should be so easy, she had almost told him so many times now. And she thought it in her head every morning that they woke up together.

“Wait!”

“What?” He stepped back toward her. That red frustration refilling his face like a wineglass.

“I love you too.” They felt a light hush around them, no less significant because of the white noise from the simmering pan.

Felix dropped his forehead to hers. “Oh, okay then.” A pause in the quiet. The rhythm of their breathing. Then his hands went around her waist, and he lifted her onto the clean countertop. Her eyes dazzled, and she couldn’t stop grinning as she leaned forward against where he stood between her knees.

“Did you see what else I sent you?” She nuzzled against his neck and chest. Afraid to see his face just then, worried he might have thought too little of the music—of those ambitions of hers.

“The Nocturne?” he asked, coiling some of her hair around his finger. “Fitting to write it in 6/8.”

“That’s not uncommon for a nocturne,” she jerked up defensively, and her eyes narrowed. If they were going to battle about music theory Felix had the upper hand by far. _Well, for now he did_ , she thought.

“I know. Still, I wish you would name it something more like … Night Barcarolle?” He grinned as she barked out a little laugh from the breath she had been holding.

“Night Boat Song?” She kissed him.

“Evening Sailing.” He said half into her lips as she turned her head to the side.

“Goddess, we’re terrible at words,” she groaned. She held his face lightly in her hand as if wondering how she could have found someone who was such a perfectly wonderful disaster, just like her. “Now go play it, idiot.” He bit her lip, seduced by the sound of his words coming from her mouth. She pulled back but not before giving him a soft headbutt. “I need to stir the sauce before it burns.”

Felix grinned and slowly drew his body away from hers. He looked fully at home there, as he walked into the living room with its electric piano. Byleth slid off the counter and sped their dinner along, her ears perked to hear the first soft notes of the boat song she wrote for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finished!
> 
> Sorry that Rodrigue was so aloof. I tried to make him go out drinking with them more, but he’s such a stuffy violinist in this. Regretting that I didn’t make him play the viola so that he would be more fun.
> 
> Thank you for reading my (much too long) fic about pianist Felix and Byleth. I've never made the pages of my fantasies this public before, and honestly I'm a little surprised what I found there. Nonetheless, it has been so enjoyable to dive into this story.
> 
> I really appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read it and also to interact with it!!  
> I hope you're all staying safe, sane, and healthy!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
